Shell to Sea Update from Erris – Shell Nets and Boats at Glengad

Shell has returned to Glen­gad beach to install nets over the cliff face. This cliff is a sand mar­tin nest­ing area, and the sand mar­tin nest­ing sea­son is begin­ning this month. Birds have been spot­ted in the area, and although there are some sec­tions of cliff not cov­ered by the nets, the nest­ing area is severe­ly restrict­ed. The sur­face of the cliff face is marked­ly dif­fer­ent from years past, after being destroyed last fall dur­ing Shel­l’s failed attempt to bring their raw gas pipeline onshore. For a report on the destruc­tion done to the beach last fall, you can read the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­p’s Novem­ber update here on Earth First! Action Reports.

Two boats were present in Broad­haven Bay today from at least 10am until 4pm. The larg­er boat moved all around the bay, while the small­er boat most­ly stayed close to the green buoy. It is pos­si­ble that they are car­ry­ing out sur­vey works to pre­pare for the off­shore pipe lay­ing. Accord­ing to Shel­l’s Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Plan, Shell may be plan­ning to begin off­shore pipe lay­ing in May of this year, using an alter­na­tive “wet start” option. From the Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Plan:

“Alter­na­tive “wet start” option
If the dredg­ing of the trench for the nearshore sec­tion of the pipeline has not been com­plet­ed and the pipelay ves­sel is avail­able to start work an alter­na­tive sequence of instal­la­tion maybe under­tak­en.
The pipelay ves­sel will install a marine anchor on the pipeline route in approx­i­mate­ly 20 to 25m of water. A wire between this anchor and the lead­ing end of the pipeline will main­tain ten­sion in the pipeline and the ves­sel will start to lay pipe towards the Cor­rib Field as out­lined pre­vi­ous­ly.
Depend­ing upon the progress of the dredg­ing oper­a­tion, the pipelay ves­sel may con­tin­ue and lay all of the line to Cor­rib. Alter­na­tive­ly, it may sus­pend its oper­a­tions part way and return to Broad­haven Bay to com­plete the pull-in of the land­fall sec­tion and then pick up the pre­vi­ous­ly laid sec­tion before con­tin­u­ing to the field.
If a “wet start” is under­tak­en, it will be nec­es­sary to join the two sec­tions of pipeline togeth­er with­in Broad­haven Bay by lift­ing the pipe ends above water and weld­ing them togeth­er, or com­plet­ing the weld on the seabed using divers.”

As expect­ed, Shell seems to be gear­ing up for anoth­er attempt at forc­ing their project ahead with­out com­mu­ni­ty con­sent again in 2009. The strug­gle against Shell con­tin­ues, fol­low­ing a spir­it­ed week­end in Dublin out­side Moun­tjoy Prison in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mau­ra Har­ring­ton. Mau­ra has been impris­oned for 20 days and has anoth­er 8 days yet to serve in her sen­tence. Anoth­er Peo­ple’s Forum will take place this week­end, with talks on the upcom­ing US case against Shel­l’s actions Nige­ria, Cli­mate Change, and Cor­rib Gas Per­mis­sions.

The Forum will take place in the Inver Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter on Sat­ur­day, April 4th from 10.30am – 3.30pm. As always, the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is open to any­one who wants to vis­it Erris to sup­port the cam­paign. Con­tact the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp: 085 1141170 ross­port­sol­i­dar­i­ty­camp at gmail dot com

—-

April 2nd, 2009

The net­ting over the cliff face at Glen­gad was tak­en down yes­ter­day by two mem­bers of Pobal Chill Chomain, in the pres­ence of a NPWS man­ag­er.

Attempts are being made by Bel­cross con­trac­tors this morn­ing (Thurs­day, 11am) to put the nets back up. They are cur­rent­ly being pre­vent­ed from fin­ish­ing this work.

Sand mar­tins and Brent geese are present on the beach.

Two boats, pos­si­bly sur­vey boats, are in Broad­haven Bay.

Beau­ti­ful day on the beach!