Category: Action Reports

Cor­po­rate greed and mind­less mate­ri­al­ism threat­en to destroy the plan­et. Act now

Ten rea­sons to join the protest at Mil­ford Haven LNG

1. The sup­posed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this facil­i­ty is that we need a secure source of ener­gy when we run out of our own. When is this pro­ject­ed need going to exist? We have just received a pipeline from the huge stocks of Nor­way. We have so much gas we haven’t got room to store it.

2. If the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing to rely on Russ­ian gas at some hypo­thet­i­cal point in the future rep­re­sents a strate­gic threat to our ener­gy sup­ply, how does get­ting it from the Mid­dle East in vul­ner­a­ble ships improve our secu­ri­ty?

3. The answer is that Qatar, which has the third largest reserves of LNG in the world after Rus­sia and Iran, is the staunchest ally of the USA in the Mid­dle East. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly the LNG com­pa­ny oper­at­ing out of Mil­ford is owned by the US giant Car­lyle group, whose involve­ment with the Bush Neo-cons is well doc­u­ment­ed, and who stand to make enor­mous prof­its. http://english.pravda.ru/comp/2002/06/25/31119.html
http://www.ameinfo.com/94204.html

4. The plan­ning process has been pushed through, against pub­lic protest into safe­ty fac­tors, as a pro­to­type of the Blair gov­ern­ments need to secure ener­gy sup­plies from pri­vate com­pa­nies. Effec­tive­ly their pow­er depends on main­tain­ing cen­tral con­trol of the leg­is­la­tion relat­ed to plan­ning for large ener­gy projects.

5. The Haven is emi­nent­ly unsuit­able for this kind of project; being locat­ed in haz­ardous waters and sit­u­at­ed with­in metres of numer­ous oil stor­age tanks. SIGTTO – the industry’s safe­ty con­sul­ta­tion net­work has con­demned the sit­ing of the LNG Ter­mi­nal at Mil­ford.
http://sigtto.re-invent.net/DNN/

6. The pipeline is osten­si­bly so large to act as a stor­age facil­i­ty as a deter­rent to Ter­ror­ist attack. Not only is this unten­able in view of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the ships, but this kind of pres­surised pipe has no prece­dent in this coun­try and its safe­ty remains a mys­tery which they have refused to inves­ti­gate.

7. This whole project is total­ly unnec­es­sary. As the film Incon­ve­nient Truth points out, we can solve our ener­gy needs and cli­mate change by adopt­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures. In this light such mas­sive invest­ment in waste­ful tech­nol­o­gy is absurd and dis­tracts us from the need to cre­ate long-term renew­able solu­tions.

8. This whole affair rep­re­sents the steam­rol­ler­ing of pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion. The first many knew, includ­ing those who had signed con­sents for a “pipelineâ€? of unspec­i­fied dimen­sions to cross their land, of the mas­sive destruc­tion wrought on 200 miles of welsh coun­try­side with motor­way size routes cut through price­less land­scapes, was when they sud­den­ly found it all hap­pen­ing.

9. In many places the routes have passed per­ilous­ly close to dwellings, elec­tri­cal cables and, as in the case of Tre­banos, where they have at last pre­vent­ed them blast­ing through the moun­tain, pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant risk of land­slides. Pre­vi­ous acci­dents using this tech­nol­o­gy don’t bear con­tem­plat­ing; the pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple must apply here.

10. Why should this devel­op­ment come through the heart­land of rur­al Wales? Reports sug­gest the ter­mi­nal and Re-gas­si­fi­ca­tion plant should be sit­ed off­shore and brought in some­where along the Bris­tol Chan­nel. This shows that cor­po­rate inter­ests are at stake and even vie with each oth­er to deter­mine that the route of the pipeline does not go through their land.

http://www.green-culture.blogspot.org

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Con­trac­tor Details for LNG pipeline
22.11.2006 19:06
Main con­trac­tor fo LNG pipeline are:-
Land Marine Project Engi­neer­ing Ltd
Dock Road North
Broms­bor­ough
Wirral
CH6 2LN
Tel No 0151 641560
Fax No 0151 6449990
http://landandmarine.com
A quick look at web­site lists they are under­tak­ing con­tracts for MOD as well work­ing in even more envi­ro­men­tal parts of the globe

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In the face of con­cert­ed oppo­si­tion from local peo­ple, the gov­ern­ment has reversed its deci­sion to allow the pipeline con­struc­tors to use explo­sives close to the vil­lage of Tre­banos in South Wales.

BBC news report on the reversed deci­sion from the DTI.

This clear­ly would not have hap­pened with­out the cam­paign of resis­tance from local peo­ple, so this is only the first step on the path to stop­ping this enor­mous­ly destruc­tive pipeline.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/6170620.stm