Fantastic week of blocking Shell

3rd August 2011
This week saw Shell begin the next stage of their gas project by attempt­ing to extend and secure their com­pound in Augh­oose in prepa­ra­tion to lay the onshore sec­tion of the pipeline. This entailed trac­tors deliv­er­ing fenc­ing, machin­ery and oth­er things for them to car­ry out the work. If all had gone to plan would have had the com­pound near com­ple­tion now. How­ev­er, there was five days of 12 hour block­ades which has slowed them down tremen­dous­ly. Here’s a quick round up of the events of last week…

The week start­ed Mon­day 25th July at 7am with a tri­pod which last­ed over five hours. The pro­test­er was removed using scaf­fold­ing. The after­noon was spent caus­ing chaos on bikes and on foot with the cops even­tu­al­ly need­ing to seize bikes in order to stop the pro­test­ers. At most ten trac­tors made the jour­ney to the com­pound, all hav­ing been delayed. Shell made a state­ment on the radio that their work had been “severe­ly imped­ed”. Not bad for the first day.

At 7am on Tues­day there was an arm tube lock-on which last­ed well over an hour. No arrests were made. Only 2 trac­tors made it into the com­pound before mid­day. The rest of the day was spent hid­ing in ditch­es and jump­ing out in front of and onto trac­tors with one per­son spend­ing over an hour and a half on top of a trac­tor before being forcibly removed and arrest­ed. Shell had still had less than 20 deliv­er­ies to the com­pound so far in the week.

Wednes­day saw an 8 hour lock-on from 7am. Two indi­vid­u­als were arrest­ed under pub­lic order charges. The Gar­dai (police) had stepped up their ‘pro­tec­tion’ of the trac­tors and were pro­vid­ing a tight con­voy for each trac­tor. At some points there was two pad­dy wag­ons, two squad cars, a cut­ting team, an IRMS jeep and detec­tive Brett Nolan’s under­cov­er vehi­cle escort­ing each trac­tor. The Gar­dai were being ordered to get out of their vehi­cles and run along­side the trac­tor in order to try and stop the peo­ple hop­ping aboard. Despite this peo­ple were able to mount most trac­tors that went by and less than ten trac­tors made their deliv­er­ies by 7pm.

On Thurs­day the first trac­tor was stopped by some­one climb­ing onto the cab. Pleas­ing­ly this last­ed for two and a half hours, with the indi­vid­ual man­ag­ing to jump the fence and get away with­out being arrest­ed. With some fine com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coor­di­na­tion, as the next trac­tor made its jour­ney from the refin­ery to the new com­pound a group cre­at­ed a decoy by appear­ing to attempt to get on the trac­tor. How­ev­er unbe­known to the cops this was mere­ly a dis­trac­tion as the tri­pod was being set up just a cou­ple of hun­dred metres up the road. After the sounds of a bat­tle cry in the dis­tance the group of pro­test­ers caus­ing chaos respond­ed and ran up the road with the Gar­dai look­ing some­what baf­fled. As the tri­pod was estab­lished a call went out to anoth­er group who were sit­u­at­ed over in Cross­moli­na (a town 45 min­utes from the camp)where the scaf­fold­ing firm are based. They block­ad­ed the scaf­fold­ing firms gates for a cou­ple of hours. No arrests were made. The tri­pod was even­tu­al­ly dis­man­tled at around 3pm so peo­ple gath­ered at the refin­ery gates. Num­bers grew and morale was high. When the next trac­tor was brought out chaos ensued. One pro­test­er climbed on the cab and after 20 min­utes was forcibly removed and arrest­ed. This was fol­lowed by anoth­er pro­test­er climb­ing under­neath the same trac­tor. They were removed after about 15 min­utes but man­aged to avoid arrest. This was fol­lowed by a rolling block­ade on the road with peo­ple sit­ting down, being removed then sit­ting straight back down. After about 40 min­utes the trac­tor reversed back into the refin­ery. The ela­tion among folk was amaz­ing. The cops look­ing defeat­ed got in their vehi­cles and left. There was real cel­e­bra­tion with a feel­ing that this had been one of the strongest days of the cam­paign. It was 5.15pm and work was­n’t due to fin­ish until 7pm. A group stayed at the refin­ery to ensure noth­ing came out…it did­n’t. Two trucks made deliv­er­ies on Thurs­day.

Fri­day was the mass day of action. Due to this Shell had already can­celled work for the day. Pro­test­ers made their way down to the com­pound at around 9.30. Some pro­test­ers made it into the com­pound whilst oth­ers tore down fences. There was a huge Gar­dai pres­ence and approx­i­mate­ly 80 IRMS (Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty). A sec­ond attempt was made lat­er in the day to pull down more fences which end­ed in sev­er­al peo­ple being hurt and requir­ing hos­pi­tal treat­ment. Despite this peo­ple remained at the com­pound , many spend­ing the after­noon play­ing music and relax­ing on the road. Despite the injuries it was felt it was a great day and that by hav­ing the day of action our work was already done as Shell did­n’t work.

Shel­l’s first week of work did not go to plan. After study­ing their traf­fic man­age­ment plan , which out­lines their pre­dict­ed truck move­ments over the 26 month peri­od that they intend to com­plete the project, it appears that at this stage their aim was to be mak­ing 159 truck move­ments per day! Last week in total they had approx­i­mate­ly 40.

There feels like a real buzz in the cam­paign at the moment! The Gar­daí are appear­ing stretched and are using up a lot of their resources. They are hav­ing to change their tac­tics dai­ly and despite their efforts and ludi­crous pro­tec­tion of Shel­l’s vehi­cles pro­test­ers are still man­ag­ing to cause huge dis­rup­tion.

If peo­ple can come up,now real­ly feels like the time! To main­tain this strong resis­tance we need peo­ple and ideas. There is so much to do on camp at the moment. Not only is there protests but camp life is always busy and full of things to do.

For more infor­ma­tion call us on 0851141170 and email rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org