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press release
Tuesday November 20, 2007 13:42
by Cllr Keith Martin - Labour Westport
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Any renegotiation of the oil/gas terms should be preceded by an investigation into how those terms were given to Shell - the 'economic treason' as referred to by Dick Spring. Also investigated should be the meetings between the taoiseach and Shell, between the EPA and Shell - meetings denied to ordinary Irish citizens.
What is Liz. McManus blathering about? Renegotiation means just that - it does not mean imposition.
There are many ways to lever the current situation to take account of the fact that people should be allowed to exist without a permanent threat to their lives.
I hope Eamonn Gilmore can pick up where his predecessor left off in '96 -
'Does the Government intend to give legislative effect to the call by the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise and Employment, Deputy Rabbitte, for a ban on Shell products?'
http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0466/D.0466.199605280195.html
It appears to have fallen off the radar that there is an opportunity for the government to re-negotiate the licences when the companies register their declaration of commerciality.
That is the stage prior to commercial drilling.
They are acting under exploration licences at the moment.
Don't know if the dealaration of commerciality has been registered for the Corrib Field, but it certainly hasn't for the fields further North off the coast of Donegal.
There is a window of opportunity to renegotiate these contracts without having to fork out on compensation.
Chavez managed to renegotiate even after the declaration of commerciality.
Worth pondering.
Have I got this right - Shell embarked on a multi-million dollar project, drilling, buying and building
but had no licence to operate a refinery until last week? Isn't that a bit like a man building a mansion and then applying for planning permission - he may get it or he may not. He may have to pull the whole thing down.
So we are supposed to believe that the government and the EPA had no prior agreement with Shell that an IPPC licence would be given. We are supposed to believe that the whole project to date has been one big gamble by Shell and partners. We are also supposed to believe that there has been no corruption in government or the EPA.
I know what I believe.
A similar rip-off happened in Russia when the Yeltsin administration gave the big energy companies incredibly favourable deals for natural resources exploitation. Shell was of course a big winner, and while allegations of corrupt practices were made, it was always going to be difficult to prove anything. ( Just ask anyone who has ever worked for Shell if corruption happens in relation to oil and gas contracts though, and see how big a laugh you get).
What the Russians did was simple-
The contract signed with Shell over Sakhalin II was subject to the company meeting normal standards in relation to the environment and pollution. Of course Shell find it impossible to meet even ordinary less than stringent standards. In the past the company's own staff have died to save the company the bother of meeting safety regulations , so the idea of spending money maintaining habitats for whales and bears didn't stand a chance.
The Russian government insisted that the original deal was void because Shell had not done enough to prevent environmental degradation.
A new deal had to be negotiated, with a large stake for the Russian people included this time.
Now, let's look at the situation in Ireland. Shell has manged to get an amazingly profitable deal in the contract to exploit Corrib.
Allegations of corruption are bandied around, but it's unlikely that Bertie Ahern or Ray Burke are losing sleep over the likelihood of anything ever being proved.
But the company has consistently had problems with planning and environmental laws. Just recently they even built a road without permission. Their project is experimental, from the length of the high-pressure pipeline to the dumping of thousands of tons of peat dug from one site into another site many miles away. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out a way of making the contract void on the basis of the way Shell are choosing to configure the deal.
All an enlightened government has to do is say they want to review aspects of the Corrib scheme and see whether it meets environmental standards. One of the government parties even had such a commitment in amongst their pre-election promises.
It is becoming clear that Ministers Ryan and Gormley have a number of tools at their disposal if they wish to prevent the construction of the refinery. The question is: do they want to? Or was their pre-election waffle just that?
I believe they are scared/gutless/frightened to take any action against Shell and their stooges in FF.
They now have a very serious credibility issue both within the Green Party and without.
In Summer 2005, while the Rossport 5 were corporate hostages, the then Minister Noel Dempsey was forced to acknowledge - following aerial photographs of a 3Km length of illegally-welded pipeline - that this illegality actually existed. He and his inept civil servants had been told about this on numerous occasions prior to photo publication but, given the then and now state of the State, they chose to take $hell's 'assurances' over that of the nasty natives.
When he was shamed into doing something he tried to get maximum spin out of it by announcing his 'tough guy' stance on the day of a support rally in Dublin.
HE WROTE $HELL A STIFF LETTER TELLING THEM THEY'D HAVE TO CUT IT UP!
WHAT DEMPSEY LEFT OUT OF THE LETTER WAS A TIME FRAME WITHIN WHICH THE PIPE WAS TO BE DISMANTLED ...
The significance of that elision - by whose dictat? - was that it gave $hell an out. IF Dempsey had laid out a 30 day compliance limit and IF $hell had failed to comply within the specified limit they would have been in breach of the Plan of Development (for what it's worth) and the State could then have played hardball - as Putin did very effectively in Sakhalin resulting in $hell CEO van der Veer hiking his ass to Russia three weeks in a row and still was forced to cede control of Sakhalin to Russia.
As the song says, 'some got balls and brains and some got balls and chains' ...
... and some don't have balls at all!
Ryan, Gormley, Sargent, & all need to hear from the people about their abandonment of green concerns.
It seems that already Shell can readily give two fingers to the Law, and the State will bend over to accommodate them. It does not bode well for any future policing or monitoring of the refinery.
[An Bord Pleanála has permitted Shell E&P Ireland to retain a temporary road which had been built initially without authorisation at the landfall for the Corrib gas pipeline.
The appeals board has said that the temporary road will not have a significant effect on the Glenamoy bog complex special area of conservation (SAC), if certain conditions are complied with.
The board has allowed the Corrib gas developers to retain the temporary development for a five-year period to "facilitate the construction of the Corrib gas pipeline".]
http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1635
The S2S Solidarity Camp was removed from the same SAC by court order even though it could never be argued that it contributed even close to the equivalent damage as the illegal road.