Shell to Sea / Rossport Solidarity Camp Update from Erris Co. Mayo. November 2009.

While Glen­gad and Shell issues have large­ly gone from the pub­lic eye, and indeed things have qui­etened down some what, that’s not to say that stuff hasn’t been going on, it just doesn’t always make the media.

The last few months have seen a few devel­op­ments since the Soli­taire left our shores.

While Glen­gad and Shell issues have large­ly gone from the pub­lic eye, and indeed things have qui­etened down some what, that’s not to say that stuff hasn’t been going on, it just doesn’t always make the media.

The last few months have seen a few devel­op­ments since the Soli­taire left our shores.

* Shell have com­plete­ly vacat­ed the Glen­gad com­pound in the last few week or so. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they haven’t done a won­der­ful job of clean­ing up after them­selves. Plen­ty of rub­ble was left behind on the beach from the cause­way that they extend­ed out to sea and then removed.

The “cliff” has been banked up with soft mate­ri­als which don’t look too sta­ble to me and will like­ly con­tin­ue to be washed out by the rain­wa­ter. In the old com­pound itself large heaps of mate­ri­als have been piled and net­ted over to pre­vent birds nest­ing? Strange­ly they have not attempt­ed to net the re-banked cliff area, as they had before. Some of the old net­ting can be seen on the cliff top, inter­meshed with the grass on top.

Their chan­nel buoy mark­ers have been wash­ing ashore recent­ly also, as they left these behind to. At the road entrance to the Glen­gad com­pound all the fenc­ing and gates have gone (as it has around the whole site), to be replaced with reg­u­lar cat­tle fenc­ing and gates, hav­ing pulled out at this time of year the whole place is a bit of a mud bath.

* The road, left unfin­ished by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil now Shell have pulled out, is already show­ing signs of dete­ri­o­ra­tion, with pot­holes form­ing in the tar­mac beside where the entrance gates to this com­pound stood. The Co.Co. have left the road as it stands from what I can see, with­out fin­ish­ing the works, just loads of signs and bol­lards left around every­where.

* Nov 10th last saw a pro­ces­sion along the Bel­lan­aboy Road up to the main refin­ery gates, attend­ed by about 50 local peo­ple car­ry­ing cross­es with the names of the Ogo­ni 9, to mark the exe­cu­tion of Ken Sara Wiwa and 8 of his col­leagues in 1995, the Niger­ian activists who were exe­cut­ed by the Niger­ian Mil­i­tary Dic­ta­tor­ship at the time, at Shel­l’s behest.

* The Gar­da pres­ence is like­wise down, but still tan­gi­ble.

* After a meet­ing some time ago with a few min­is­ters, the silence has been loud from the pow­ers that be, despite their recent announce­ment of set­ting up some forum or dia­logue with peo­ple involved in the Cor­rib Gas issue. How­ev­er no one here has actu­al­ly heard any­thing or been con­tact­ed about as of yet. Min­is­ter Eamon Ryan has admit­ted in the media that ‘mis­takes were made’ but has refused to dis­cuss the mov­ing of the refin­ery or the appro­pri­a­cy of a pipeline land­fall at Glen­gad. “There will be no re-vis­it­ing of the con­sents / per­mis­sions already giv­en to Shell”, he said. As usu­al the terms of ref­er­ence are pre-set by the ‘author­i­ties’ in order to avoid a fair and prop­er address­ing of the issues.

* The AFRI hedge school a few weeks ago was real­ly fan­tas­tic with some great peo­ple com­ing to have an input/speak includ­ing Den­nis Hal­l­i­day and oth­er peo­ple who have been deal­ing with Shell in oth­er coun­tries.

The fight goes on.