Drill huggers stop Shell’s drilling work in Rossport, Ireland

13.8.10
Yes­ter­day peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ty of Pul­lath­omas and Ross­port and Sol­i­dar­i­ty campers lead by the rous­ing sound of a vis­it­ing bag­piper and drum­mer, returned to one of Shel­l’s drilling rigs, gain­ing access at low tide across the exposed sand bars of Sruwad­da­con bay. On arriv­ing at the rig a num­ber of peo­ple sur­round­ed the drill cas­ing and danced around it before form­ing a tight hud­dle to pre­vent any fur­ther work occur­ring. Mean­while oth­ers held a large ban­ner and occu­pied the area while chil­dren played in the sand.

I‑RMS secu­ri­ty guards asked the drill hug­gers to leave the area “for their own safe­ty”, an offer that was polite­ly refused. Around an hour lat­er Gar­di arrived and observed while super inten­dant Diskin had a pri­vate chat with I‑RMS chief Jim Far­rell.

Bizarrely after 30 min­utes or so all the Gards left leav­ing I‑RMS in charge of polic­ing the pro­test­ers, despite their shock­ing record of vio­lence towards the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Peo­ple spent the after­noon occu­py­ing the area while chat­ting, singing, play­ing music and foot­ball.

Around 5 o’clock in the evening when most peo­ple had left, with no warn­ing I‑RMS men jumped on pro­test­ers and force­ful­ly remov­ing them, them­selves sur­round­ing the drill. The pro­test­ers attempt­ed to reach the drill again but were repeat­ed­ly “repelled” by secu­ri­ty, at this point the drill start­ed to oper­ate again while pro­test­ers and secu­ri­ty were close to it. For the next 30 min­utes this bat­tle con­tin­ued in obvi­ous breach of safe­ty reg­u­la­tions putting both work­ers and pro­test­ers at risk.

The day demon­strat­ed yet again that Shell have total dis­re­gard not only for envi­ron­ment and local com­mu­ni­ty but also for their own employ­ees.

for more info

www.shelltosea.com, www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org