Category: Action Reports

14th Feb 07

Pro­test­ers against the con­tin­ued and unre­strained pro­mo­tion of fos­sil fuel projects by the UK gov­ern­ment have block­ad­ed the main vehi­cle access route into the new LNG pipeline ter­mi­nal near Mil­ford Haven, South Wales. Their aim is to high­light the seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal and safe­ty issues sur­round­ing this project, and to call for a more sober approach to the impend­ing ener­gy cri­sis.

Eight peo­ple have phys­i­cal­ly blocked the site access road, south of the vil­lage of Her­branston, S. Wales, pre­vent­ing con­struc­tion vehi­cles from enter­ing the giant LNG ter­mi­nal.

These pro­tes­tors, inspired by the 2006 Camp for Cli­mate Action, are tar­get­ting the con­struc­tion of the Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ter­mi­nal and pipeline in South Wales. The actions aim to dis­rupt the work to the largest extent pos­si­ble. Cli­mate chaos is the great­est threat human­i­ty has ever faced yet the British gov­ern­ment and a con­glom­er­ate of Cor­po­ra­tions are reck­less­ly con­struct­ing this new car­bon inten­sive ener­gy project.

The devel­op­ment of LNG ter­mi­nals in the UK is lock­ing us into thir­ty years of yet more fos­sil fuels, in an era in which dra­mat­ic cuts in car­bon are cru­cial. The Depart­ment of Trade Indus­try last week, gave per­mis­sion for phase two of the LNG pipeline to be built. Yet, this project stark­ly reveals the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty between the so-called need for ‘ener­gy secu­ri­ty’, and the far more press­ing need to sub­stan­tial­ly dimin­ish our use of fos­sil fuels.

Lim­it­ing glob­al warm­ing to a 2 degree increase with a rel­a­tive­ly high cer­tain­ty requires the equiv­a­lent con­cen­tra­tion of CO2 to stay below 400 ppm. Achiev­ing this means rich coun­tries, like the UK, cut­ting their aver­age emis­sions by around 90% by 2030.

A pro­tes­tor said “A 90% cut in 25 years is going to require not just new tech­nolo­gies, but dif­fer­ent cul­tures, dif­fer­ent economies, dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions — in short, a dif­fer­ent way of life.”

The devel­op­ment of LNG ter­mi­nals in the UK opens up pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able car­bon inten­sive nat­ur­al gas to our ener­gy mar­kets, to the severe detri­ment of sup­port for clean decen­tralised renew­ables. Fur­ther­more, bring­ing gas from the Mid­dle East is a much more ener­gy inten­sive process than retriev­ing gas from the North Sea.

There are also sub­stan­tial safe­ty issues attached to this project. Stud­ies show that an acci­dent or ter­ror­ist attack at the Mil­ford Haven ter­mi­nals would cause “major injuries and sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to struc­tures” with­in a radius of a third of a mile and could cause sec­ond-degree burns more than a mile away.

The ter­rain through which the pipeline will run has been exten­sive­ly mined and is prone to sub­si­dence in places. Need­less to say, the instal­la­tion of a mas­sive­ly pres­surised gas pipeline through unsta­ble land is high­ly dubi­ous. Locals, fear­ing for their safe­ty, have had their ques­tions ignored. Con­cerns about the mate­r­i­al used and qual­i­ty of weld­ing employed have not been prop­er­ly addressed. Many mem­bers of affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to vocal­ly protest, but with lit­tle recog­ni­tion.

Pro­tes­tors have cho­sen to take direct action today to show their sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties along the pipeline and to stop this moral­ly inde­fen­si­ble fos­sil fuel de-struc­tion project.

Con­tact: Sarah White 07901862522

Notes to Edi­tor

The project:
Gas, liq­ue­fied in Qatar by cool­ing to ‑162C, is going to be shipped to West Wales on super tankers. There, at Mil­ford Haven, it will be regasi­fied in one of the two onshore ter­mi­nals being built by:
· Drag­on LNG, a con­sor­tium whose main part­ner is the BG Group (for­mer­ly British Gas).
· South Hook LNG, part of a new busi­ness, Qatar­gas II,owned by Qatar Petro­le­um and Exxon. This £6 bil­lion project finances the work from well to ter­mi­nal. It is the sin­gle largest ener­gy-project financ­ing ever[1] and this ter­mi­nal alone will be the biggest LNG receiv­ing ter­mi­nal in the world[2].
The Pipeline: Nation­al Grid are con­nect­ing the gas to the nation­al net­work. They are doing so by build­ing a pipeline in two phas­es from Mil­ford Haven to Glouces­ter­shire. Phase 2 of the project was giv­en the green light on 7th Feb­ru­ary 2007. This huge pipeline, 4ft in diam­e­ter, will run at 94bar pres­sure – that is 96kg/cm2.
Nation­al Grid’s (for­mer­ly known as Transco) Safe­ty Record
In 1999, a fam­i­ly of four were killed in Scot­land when a high pres­sure gas pipe explod­ed by their home. Mas­sive cor­ro­sion in the pipeline, and a fail­ure on the part of Nation­al Grid/Transco (NG/T) to keep ade­quate records on what kind of pipes were being used, led to the explo­sion. Cor­ro­sion has already been seen on the welds in the South Wales pipeline
Since pri­vati­sa­tion, NG/T have shed thou­sands of engi­neer­ing jobs and cut main­te­nance work. In 2000 it was revealed that Transco had under­spent its agreed pipeline main­te­nance and replace­ment pro­gramme by £358m over the pre­vi­ous two years[3]. This same cor­po­ra­tion, account­able to only its share­hold­ers and board, is now respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of thou­sands of peo­ple along the route of this pipe, which is run at a pres­sure, unprece­dent­ed in Europe and US, of which Nation­al Grid have no expe­ri­ence of run­ning. Already, there is evi­dence of their cost sav­ing strat­e­gy: the Health and Safe­ty Exec­u­tive stip­u­lates the use of poly­ethe­lene in gas pip­ing, yet Nation­al Grid is using oth­er mate­ri­als.

[1] The agree­ment was the third-largest project financ­ing of any kind, after the Chan­nel Tun­nel and a Tai­wanese high-speed rail financ­ing. Banks with major roles in the project financ­ing include HSBC, Bar­clays, Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Cit­i­group.
[2] http://education.independent.co.uk/careers_advice/engineering/article1946244.ece
[3] http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=662322003

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ACTION REPORT

Since Novem­ber there has been lots of protests around the gas pipeline cur­rent­ly being con­struct­ed in Wales, and short­ly Englans. Today peo­ple paid a vis­it to sun­ny pem­bokeshire to take direct action on one of the root caus­es of cli­mate change; fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tions seek­ing more prof­its for their share­hold­ers.

Five peo­ple block­ad­ed the main access to the con­struc­tion site for six hours, result­ing in huge tail­backs and the typ­i­cal enor­mous police pres­ence. Peo­ple laid on the ground are appar­ent­ly a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty. What real­ly is a threat to our secu­ri­ty is the con­tin­u­a­tion of yet more fos­sil fuel projects, more car­bon in the atmos­phere and more death, mis­ery and hunger. The peo­ple were even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed at mid­day and are now enjoy­ing a well deserved sleep in the lux­u­ri­ous sur­round­ings of Haver­ford­West Police sta­tion.

Around the same time this morn­ing peo­ple also approached the kilo­me­ter long jet­ty, which will car­ry the liq­uid from the super­tankers to the ter­mi­nal. They were pre­vent­ed from get­ting on to the jet­ty; appar­ent­ly it’s dan­ger­ous unless you have been giv­en health and safe­ty train­ing. Lets hope the peo­ple of Mil­ford Haven have been giv­en some train­ing for what to do if there is acci­dent. Mil­ford Haven’s most expe­ri­enced ship­ping pilots have described the risk of a fatal col­li­sion at one of the ter­mi­nals as a ‘real every­day real­i­ty’ which would put 20000 peo­ple lives at risk.

Just twen­ty peo­ple have man­aged to cause a splen­did com­mo­tion at the build­ing site of the South Hook Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ter­mi­nal in West Wales. It is an inspir­ing exam­ple of how a few peo­ple can take respon­si­bil­i­ty for theirs and our future.

While work may con­tin­ue tomor­row on the ter­mi­nal, yet anoth­er span­ner has been thrown in their LNG pipedream (I had to have one pipe pun).

See
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/362275.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/362322.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6360281.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6365223.stm
http://www.pembrokeshiretv.com/content/templates/v6-article.asp?articleid=3163&zoneid=33

Back­ground
http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=25798