Shell to Sea Update

Dear Friends,
Hope this email finds ye well. Here is a brief update on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion:

1. Shell activ­i­ty in the area is ramp­ing up late­ly and if you are think­ing of vis­it­ing the area we would call on you to do it over the next few weeks as help in resist­ing the work that is list­ed below is need­ed. You are always more than wel­come to stay at the new camp house; email us (rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com) or phone 0851141170 to say when you can come. Check out our new web­site too: www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com

2. Shell plan to start off­shore pipeline lay­ing short­ly as the Soltaire (pipe lay­ing ship) is cur­rent­ly off the coast of Done­gal. Shell have also been vis­it­ing hous­es late­ly around Glen­gad where the pipeline is due to come ashore say­ing that there would be some dig­ging and noise dis­tur­bance in the area short­ly. How­ev­er they have hit a hitch with the Erris Fish­er­men as this week they had a protest to object to where Shell are plac­ing their waste out­flow pipe. Pat O Don­nell said “We’ve been fish­ing these waters for gen­er­a­tions and we all have licences to fish them. So let the Min­is­ter for Jus­tice and the Gov­ern­ment pro­tect our rights now the way they brought in the Gar­daí to pro­tect the work­ers on the gas refin­ery,”
He added that if Shell want­ed to remove his crab pots from the route of the pipeline, they would have to get a court order. “And I won’t heed the court order so they’ll have to send me and oth­er fish­er­men to jail”. Read a report of it here http://www.indymedia.ie/article/88366

2. Shell have begun work­ing on their com­pound in Glen­gad by start­ing to put in secu­ri­ty fences which are in order that work will be able to begin on some of the off­shore work. (See pic­tures here http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1815). Most of this work occurs on a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion with some of the fenc­ing only about 200m from where the camp was. This work is almost cer­tain­ly ille­gal as plan­ning per­mis­sion has still not been grant­ed for any of the onshore pipeline. But the pow­ers that be are ignor­ing all attempts to high­light the sit­u­a­tion and let­ting Shell oper­ate as they wish. Two peo­ple were arrest­ed in the last week on the site but were released with­out charge.

3. Shell secu­ri­ty: There is now a new secu­ri­ty firm oper­at­ing in the area on behalf of Shell. Over the last week Shell have got some seri­ous­ly bad press over the sur­veil­lance and inti­ma­tion of local res­i­dents which includ­ed the film­ing of fam­i­lies and chil­dren on glen­gad beach (see: http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1820). Now any­one who vis­its the area and goes for a swim in the sea just beside where the camp used to be, the chances are you will be filmed. Today Shell were put under pres­sure on nation­al radio to iden­ti­fy the secu­ri­ty firm but refused to do so, mak­ing it obvi­ous that Shell have some­thing to hide as to who the firm is (it is rumoured local­ly that it is the Golan group). How­ev­er even these heav­ies need pro­tect­ing as evi­denced by how the gar­daí escort­ed them off when the full secu­ri­ty bus was stopped by locals for fail­ing to dis­play any tax or insur­ance but this infringe­ment was as usu­al ignored by the gar­daí.

4. Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil build­ing a road for Shell. The local author­i­ty is build­ing a road through the area specif­i­cal­ly for Shell against the wish­es of the local peo­ple. It shows how invid­i­ous the Shell men­tal­i­ty is, as now you have coun­cil employ­ees going around brib­ing and threat­en­ing local res­i­dents to give per­mis­sion for the coun­cil to widen the road. So far these bribes and threats have only swayed one or 2 of the landown­ers and the local res­i­dent are fight­ing the road upgrade through legal chan­nels. (See http://www.indymedia.ie/article/88317).

There is also alot of oth­er stuff going on, such as Shell being stopped from access­ing Ross­port com­mon­age late­ly, loads of sub­mis­sions gone into the plan­ning appli­ca­tions and a Euro­pean Peti­tions Chal­lenge. As always we need help with every­thing from direct actions, to ban­ner mak­ing, to help­ing out on the camp gar­den so please vis­it if you have time to spare. Also big thanks to the peo­ple in Leeds for the recent camp fundrais­er.

Any­way see all the lat­est cam­paign news on http://www.shelltosea.com

Hope to see some of ye soon.

Best wish­es from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Campers x

www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com