Shell humbled as protestors disrupt arrival of the Tunnel Boring Machine

31st July 2012

The last twelve plus hours saw pro­test­ers in Erris take on one of the largest Gar­dai oper­a­tions Ire­land has seen in some time – and ran rings around it. The mam­moth oper­a­tion saw hun­dreds of Gar­dai and IRMS secu­ri­ty try­ing to escort the tun­nel bor­ing machine [TBM] to Aghoos. Yet Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers man­aged, in sep­a­rate inci­dents, two lock-ons and used a car to block­ade a bridge on the route of the TBM.

Fol­low­ing on from Sun­day night’s dis­cov­ery of the arrival of the TBM into Dublin Port (see http://www.indymedia.ie/article/102198 & http://www.wsm.ie/c/garda-deployed-protect-shells-machine-people-ireland ), pro­test­ers from Sli­go met it at its overnight rest­ing place, while oth­ers mobilised with peo­ple com­ing from across the coun­try. We were told that there would be an armed response unit and oth­er pieces would be join­ing the con­vey, hav­ing come in from Killy­begs and Belfast.

Despite short notice a call out for a protest at Bal­li­na 9pm, Mon­day night, was quick­ly picked up and spread. Local radio sta­tions spread the word, and the six­ty or so pro­test­ers were joined by many from Bal­li­na and sur­round­ing areas – some to see the TBM itself, but often offer­ing sup­port as well.

Ban­ners were held call­ing for an end to Shel­l’s occu­py­ing army, point­ing out that not only were Shell col­o­niz­ing Erris for its own needs, not and they were doing it with the con­nivance of the Irish state – who had sup­plied armed Gar­dai to add to their many insults. There were many plain-clothes cops cir­cling around, some of them dis­play­ing remark­able faith­ful­ness to 1970s stereo­types…

Just after mid­night the first of the lock-ons went into place out­side of Cross­moli­na. Despite a strong Gar­dai pres­ence in this town, it caught them com­plete­ly on the hop. The con­voy was halt­ed on the out­skirts of Bal­li­na, with the Sli­go road being blocked by Gar­dai, while the pub­lic order team raced to deal with the lock-on. Pro­test­ers and oth­ers from Bal­li­na attempt­ed to reach the con­voy but were turned back.

The lock-on last­ed a lit­tle under an hour with two arrest­ed. Reac­tion from the Gar­dai, nev­er the most pleas­ant from the pub­lic order unit’s cut­ting team of But­ler and Gill was sour­er than usu­al.

Pro­test­ers, unde­terred, left Bal­li­na and regrouped at Bel­la­cor­rick. After a few hours wait, top­ping our­selves up with refresh­ments, the con­voy came into sight (4.30am). One well known local cam­paign­er prompt­ly blocked the bridge with her van, park­ing it diag­o­nal­ly across a nar­row spot bring­ing things once again to a halt. Yet again despite there being sev­er­al van loads of Gar­dai with us.

A trac­tor from Carey’s Tool and Plant Hire of Ban­gor (097–83018 / 086–8236018) was brought up to haul it out – the com­pa­ny are well known for doing this for Shell over the years. Resis­tance was put up by the 30 or so pro­test­ers there, lead­ing to a bat­tle for the bridge. Though over­whelmed sev­er­al times over by Gar­dai num­bers, it took them time to clear us out of the way, ket­tling us next to the old pub. It was easy to see that it was start­ing to affect them.

Just as that was fin­ish­ing and the con­voy was on its way again, lat­er than ever, news came through that a sec­ond lock-on was in place on the Ban­gor road (6am). Cue enraged Gar­dai as the care­ful­ly planned oper­a­tion to move the TBM became far­ci­cal. Anoth­er hours worth of delay with anoth­er two arrests.

The whole of the sur­round­ing area was sealed off, though some pro­test­er vehi­cles man­aged to get back to camp to the great irri­ta­tion of local Gar­dai. To top it off, the TBM, now many hours lat­er than it should have been, was unable to make the turn­ing at Aghoos which would take it down to its final rest­ing place. Thus forc­ing it to go to Gle­n­amoy in order to turn and try again.

Where it prompt­ly got stuck at 8am. One local cou­ple were told to park their van up in a spe­cif­ic place by Gar­dai. Who then said they that was wrong and dragged it away to a new place. Where the turn­ing truck crashed into it… adding insult to all of this, the l van dri­ver was assault­ed by Gar­dai. Then got stuck as the road began to cave in under the weight of the 162 ton seg­ment; the dri­ver refused to get back into the truck in case it top­pled down the side of the embank­ment.

Mean­while the tail­backs grew. Dri­vers, under­stand­ably irate irate dri­vers were threat­ened with arrest­ed; an indi­vid­ual on McGrath’s truck on their way to dial­y­sis was sent home.

As it stands, the trucks are still there, one tied to the oth­er to stop it slip­ping more. For a good image see http://www.shelltosea.com/sites/default/files/images/TBM_truck_stuck_at_Glenamoy.jpg Thhe main road to Ross­port is cut off and might be for the fore­see­able future as they try to find solu­tions. Word is that cranes might be brought in, but they come with their own sets of prob­lems. The rain has final­ly start­ed. We will wait and see, and prob­a­bly have a few good laughs. The TBM, offen­sive­ly, has been named Fion­nu­ala from the Chil­dren of Lir, and like that leg­end may it be stuck there for 300 years…

It is fair to say peo­ple here are pleased. At short notice as great response was organ­ised and the mul­ti-mil­lion euro oper­a­tion made a mock­ery off. Shell and the Irish state thought they were going to sneak the TBM in under every­one’s noses. Instead they got a rapid­ly mobilised set of protests that used it to bring the cam­paign mes­sage to peo­ple who had not encoun­tered it before. The farce it became was giv­en the air­time it deserved, Shel­l’s dirty secret­ly received a pub­lic wash­ing. It was real­ly spir­it­ing to learn that a group of young lads had come down from Sli­go to oppose it, hav­ing only just heard about it on the radio.

We thought that at best it would be high­ly sym­bol­ic, we nev­er thought that we could make such a laugh­ing stock of a mul­ti-mil­lion euro oper­a­tion. The icing on the cake though, came from Shell. The farce at Gle­n­amoy shows them up for what they were. If they cant, with all that plan­ning, get the TBM in, how can there be any trust that they can run the pipeline safe­ly. As one sleep-deprived but cheer­ful camper said, if they cant even get the tun­nel bor­ing machine turned on the road, how the hell are they going to get it up the estu­ary…

Update: Right, a quick update from camp. The Tun­nel Bor­ing Machine is still stuck. Shel­l’s con­trac­tors Road­bridge have been try­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent meth­ods, but none work­ing. Cur­rent­ly, it is believed the plan is to build up the road so local res­i­dents can get past, then use the main road to bring in cranes that can lift the truck in sec­tions. How­ev­er, there is resis­tance in the air…

Fol­low­ing on from pre­vi­ous sto­ries…

Ini­tial­ly the Gar­dai closed off the entire road, mak­ing local res­i­dents and tourists sit in their cars with­out infor­ma­tion — reach­ing us many tales of out­right lies being told to peo­ple by Gar­dai who refuse to acknowl­edge it was any­thing to do with Shell. The peo­ple of Erris are not stu­pid.

The vast Gar­dai num­bers which had been escort­ing the TBM van­ished entire­ly from the area, pre­sum­ably utter­ly exhaust­ed from a whole night of being giv­en the run around. They left four of their num­ber to try and man­age the traf­fic, which was by the after­noon slow and backed up, most­ly as lor­ries from Lennon and Bar­retts quar­ries had start­ed turn­ing up with stone for the road build­ing. Locals res­i­dents, already furi­ous at the dis­rup­tion and gar­dai rude­ness towards them, came out of their hous­es and stopped the trucks, say­ing the TBM was sim­ply not want­ed.

The four Gar­dai were not up to the job, and most­ly did what Road­bridge told them to — so when Road­bridge’s fore­man demand­ed the lor­ries come through side by side, grid­lock ensued. Res­i­dents had to sort the Gar­dai’s mess, redi­rect­ing traf­fic and lor­ries to clear the block­age.

More and more peo­ple start­ed com­ing as radio and word of mouth car­ried the sto­ry, with peo­ple com­ing from across Mayo to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with friends and fam­i­ly. Doors were opened by the peo­ple of Gle­n­amoy to those who came to stand in the rain against Shell.

Mean­while, Mayo coun­ty coun­cil is bend­ing over back­wards to help Shell clear up their mess — all those grants seem to be com­ing use­ful after all. Coun­ty man­ag­er Peter Hynes is not going to hold Shell respon­si­ble, so yet again the peo­ple are pick­ing up Shel­l’s bill. How­ev­er, Shell did have to eat hum­ble pie as the sto­ry spread, with the head of Shell Ire­land hav­ing to issue an apol­o­gy, or rather regret­ting the incon­ve­nience. Not as much as the res­i­dents do.

Shel­l’s secu­ri­ty IRMS are now con­trol­ling a pub­lic road and decid­ing where res­i­dents can walk. This was chal­lenged lead­ing to some peo­ple being put in the ditch. Of course the Gar­dai stood in line with IRMS — real­ly was impos­si­ble to tell them apart, but res­i­dents made it very clear that the road did not belong to Shell or its lack­eys.

As ever, with these things, it is great to be in the midst of such com­mu­ni­ty spir­it and resis­tance.

It appears that Road­bridge are going to resume work after mid­night, with the aim of shift­ing the list­ing truck tomor­row and tak­ing it to Bel­linaboy refin­ery (a change from going direct to the Aghoos com­pound), until more work can be done to strenght­en the roads. We think the mighty Irish bog may be a bit trick­er than that…

Camp is tak­ing a rest — its been a long 36 hours for many peo­ple, though some are going to main­tain a pres­ence at the site of the fias­co. Oth­er good news is that the two peo­ple arrest­ed for the sec­ond lock-on have been released with­out charge. The first two are up in court in Bal­li­na tomor­row.

One twit­ter cap­tured it:  http://pic.twitter.com/55lYSNpB

For images see  http://www.shelltosea.com/content/pictures-tunnelling-machine-stuck-glenamoy and http://photos.independent.ie/gallery/Shell_to_Sea_protest/slideshow/Shell_to_Sea_activists_protest/05mI7xq7Oxakf