Shell to Sea campaigners target Shell executives in Ireland

The folks in suits final­ly got a taste of the con­flict they’ve been orches­trat­ing in Co. Mayo, Ire­land for the past decade. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Shell and their team of expert wit­ness­es who are pre­sent­ing the plan­ning appli­ca­tion for the Cor­rib Gas onshore pipeline to the Irish plan­ning board were pre­vent­ed from leav­ing the oral hear­ing Thurs­day night by pro­test­ers from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp.

Thurs­day was a long day for Shel­l’s expert wit­ness­es, boss­es, and exec­u­tives. The plan­ning board­’s oral hear­ing into the Cor­rib Gas pipeline has been ongo­ing in Co. Mayo for the past four weeks, and local res­i­dents have been ques­tion­ing Shell experts on details sur­round­ing the pro­posed onshore pipeline.

At 10pm, exhaust­ed and with long jour­neys ahead of them Shell del­e­gates exit­ed the front doors of the hotel to dis­cov­er that pro­test­ers had board­ed their bus, hold­ing plac­ards and ban­ners with mes­sages read­ing “Ener­gy should­n’t cost the earth”and “Shell: destroy­ing the world, one com­mu­ni­ty at a time.”

At one stage when four high up Shell peo­ple tried to leave in a car, two pro­test­ers met them at the road and blocked their car with a ban­ner read­ing “Shel­l’s lies cost lives.” The annoyed dri­ver attempt­ed to dri­ve through the ban­ner and in the process ran over one per­son­’s foot. No seri­ous injury was sus­tained and the dri­ver refused to make any apolo­gies for his actions.

After delay­ing the Shell suits for over an hour, one mem­ber of the protest explained that “it was so sat­is­fy­ing to final­ly see these peo­ple at the top, who are nev­er held account­able sud­den­ly be con­front­ed with their own respon­si­bil­i­ty for this project and the dev­as­ta­tion it has caused to the com­mu­ni­ty”