Shell gas terminal blockaded, Bacton, Norfolk, UK 7am April 19th — updated

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pat O’Don­nell and against Shell on Earth!

Update:

the road was closed off till 2pm, when peo­ple were removed and arrest­ed — sev­en peo­ple at the scene on sus­pi­cion of obstruct­ing the high­way, and three peo­ple have been sum­moned to appear in court at a lat­er date.

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Activists have today block­ad­ed the access to Bac­ton gas ter­mi­nal (1) on the North Nor­folk coast; the road is cur­rent­ly blocked by activists lying in the road attached to steel arm tubes and by a large steel tri­pod.

Bac­ton gas ter­mi­nal is the largest of its kind in Britain, pump­ing North Sea gas to Britain and main­land Europe; the ter­mi­nal is oper­at­ed by Shell and the pro­test­ers say they are tak­ing the action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with a com­mu­ni­ty in Repub­lic of Ire­land, who are oppos­ing the devel­op­ment of a sim­i­lar facil­i­ty near Ross­port in Coun­ty Mayo (2). Shell heads the con­sor­tium devel­op­ing the Irish ter­mi­nal, refin­ery and pipeline.

A par­tic­i­pate com­ment­ed: “Bac­ton has been block­ad­ed today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Mayo who have been protest­ing against Shell vir­tu­al­ly dai­ly since 2005. Res­i­dents there have been sub­ject­ed to ongo­ing harass­ment from Shell and their con­trac­tors. Pat O’Don­nell, a local fish­er­man, is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a 7 month jail sen­tence for his part in the resis­tance to Shel­l’s devel­op­ment”.

Com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance in the Ross­port area has been fuelled by con­cerns that the new ter­mi­nal will ruin the the coastal envi­ron­ment, farm­land and wildlife habi­tats, as well as fish­ing grounds vital to the local econ­o­my. Fears for the local envi­ron­ment include poten­tial dis­tur­bance to coastal con­ser­va­tion areas, which sup­port wildlife such as dol­phins and por­pois­es, plus the pos­si­bil­i­ty that local drink­ing water could become con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. Res­i­dents also claim that due plan­ning process has not tak­en place and that con­struc­tion work start­ed before plan­ning con­sent was ful­ly approved.

“ We want our action today to send two strong mes­sages; first­ly to Shell, that wher­ev­er they are in the world, there are those who will oppose their destruc­tion of both the envi­ron­ment and local com­mu­ni­ties. Sec­ond­ly, we want to send a mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty to those oppos­ing the Irish ter­mi­nal, espe­cial­ly to Pat O’Don­nell. Their strug­gles will not be for­got­ten”.

Ends

Notes
1.Bacton gas ter­mi­nal is on the B1159, between the vil­lages of Bac­ton and Mundes­ley.

2.For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Irish based Shell to Sea cam­paign, oppos­ing the gas ter­mi­nal near Ross­port in Mayo, vis­it www.shelltosea.com