No to Welsh gas pipe, no to new major carbon energy projects

On Mon­day morn­ing, pro­tes­tors stopped work on the huge gas pipeline that is being built from Mil­ford Haven to Glouces­ter.

We occu­pied the 48″ gas pipeline and dig­ging machin­ery to ensure that no work con­tin­ues.

The landown­er invit­ed us on to her land after she felt deceived by the nation­al grid, hence there was a strange legal sit­u­a­tion as we weren’t tres­pass­ing. Fur­ther­more, she refused the police per­mis­sion to come on her land!

She had agreed to allow the pipe being built after being told it would just be a small pipe — the destruc­tion of a 100m wide strip which runs all through her land and the woods above her farm that her grand­fa­ther built show that they conned her.

How­ev­er on Tues­day the police and nation­al grid bul­lied her into ask­ing us to leave the land where the pipe is being built (not the field where we are camped) oth­er­wise she would not receive her com­pen­sa­tion. Peo­ple were still in the pipeline and up cranes last night and an ille­gal evic­tion was due to hap­pen at 8am today (Wednes­day)

The pipeline is 48″ in diam­e­ter and the nation­al grid want it to be run­ning at 92bar pres­sure. They admit they have no expe­ri­ence of run­ning a pipeline at such hgh pres­sure.

Dif­fer­ent fig­ures are float­ing around over how much it is cost­ing but it seems at least £700million. Accord­ing to one of the pro­test­ers, it is designed to car­ry a fifth of the UK’s gas sup­ply.

We need to have 90% cuts in car­bon emis­sions by 2030, yet if we allow this mega-project to go ahead, we will be going in com­plete­ly the oppo­site direc­tion. This is a major ener­gy infra­struc­ture project and must be con­front­ed. The gov­ern­ment are on paper com­mit­ed to reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions yet are not chang­ing the ener­gy pol­i­cy. They are ter­ri­fied that they won’t be able to meet gas sup­ply as this would cause the city to go into pan­ic and result in cap­i­tal leav­ing the coun­try.

There are loads of safe­ty issues as well with this pipeline. It is being built on unsta­ble land and par­ents in the near­by school are threat­en­ing to remove their childen from the schol if it gets built above their school – for fear of an repeat of Aber­fan, where a land­slide killed all the chil­dren in the pri­ma­ry school. Already there have been land­slides on the hill above the site we have occu­pied that have blocked roads.

Work was due to end in Octo­ber because of weath­er but they are behind sched­ule and hence rush­ing to push it through. They are being fined a large fig­ure every day they are late (£1million a day is float­ing around) and hence are con­tin­u­ing into Novem­ber.

Any­one who can get out to the site and get involved with stop­ping the work should def­i­nite­ly do so. The sup­port of the locals is amaz­ing and they are doing their stuff too; march­es, legal pro­ceed­ings; etc. If you want to go up, then there is a local who dri­ves back from work in Cardiff at 5pm every day and is hap­py to give lifts to any­one head­ing up there. His num­ber is 07973619183