25-01-06 The onshore gas terminal proposed for Erris, Co. Mayo, Ireland, is the world’s first onshore gas processing terminal: it is to be located in the middle of several Special Areas of Conservation, 9 km inland, on unstable bogland.
The supply pipeline will bring raw gas onshore at a pressure of up to 350 bar, in a pipeline trough that will also carry high voltage electric cables, a high pressure line containing methanol (a highly volatile coolant that will also be stored in large quantities on-site), and a hydraulic fluid line.

This pipeline was placed directly through a community, in close proximity to houses and a school. The government has claimed that the safe distance for such a pipeline is 70 metres, which is demonstrably absurd, as pipelines of much lower pressure ratings have exploded and incinerated people 200 m and more from the point of rupture.
Shell’s claim that “regulators” will be used to keep the pressure of the gas below the pipeline’s maximum design strength carries little conviction, given that the pressure of the gas through the pipeline depends on the pressure at the wellhead, and a surge at the wellhead could not be contained.

To add further insult, one of the promises made to the residents, and one of the factors material in persuading residents to support bringing the Corrib gas ashore at Rossport (before the decision to spring an onshore refinery and pipeline was sprung upon them) was that a gas infrastructure would be provided so that the community, and Co. Mayo generally, could benefit from this new gas supply.
However, as the plans were revealed, it became clear that there was no intention to enable the population of the area to benefit from the gas supply, and that the reasoning behind the planning decisions that were being made was to enable the Royal Dutch Shell corporation (and Statoil, who in their involvement have abandoned their commitment to uphold the same standards abroad as at home, and of course Marathon Oil) to save as much capital outlay as possible, and maximise their own benefit from it.

That the government imagined they could get away with such a blatant abdication of its own duties is explained by the people of Rossport themselves in these terms: they, in political and financial terms, were negligible, and hence could be walked over. Shell’s human rights and environmental record pretty much speaks for itself, and need not be rehearsed here. But what must be pointed out is the willingness of government to ignore the Constitution of their own country and to trample the rights of its own citizens underfoot.
To enable the project to proceed, the State needed to elbow aside the residents who happened to live in the pipeline’s path, and so made the unprecedented step of issuing Compulsory Acquisition Orders at Shell’s request, giving Shell the right to have these orders enforced in the Courts.

This is tantamount to granting a multinational corporation executive powers: it is the first time in the history of the State that a corporation has been given the right to levy executive orders on citizens, and to go to court when these orders are challenged. It is important in this context that a key point be understood: the Irish Constitution does not recognise private companies as legal entities, and hence does not grant them legal rights, not to speak of legal powers.
By taking this step, Bertie Ahern’s government has willingly ceded an executive function to a private party, which was not elected, does not have the rights that citizens are entitled to, and owes no kind of loyalty to the State that provides for it so generously.

Another example of the State’s willingness to trample on the Constitution by ceding powers to unelected bodies is the case of Ireland’s National Roads Authority (NRA). Established in 1993 under the Roads Act, it was given the power to assume any or all of the functions of a local council when a roads project came under that council’s remit, despite the fact that the NRA is not elected by anyone and is not answerableto the public.
It has been the practice of successive Irish governments to pretend that Irish law is based on the English system of Common Law or Case Law, in which system judges have the status of legislators. The Common Law fiction enables governments and their defenders to overlook the fundamental protections and duties the Constitution prescribes.

It is clear that the dominant view of Irish law, even among those charities and organisations whose aim is to defend civil rights, is that it is situated unproblematically in this tradition; however, the fact is that Article 15.2 of the Constitution states that the only body in the State with legislative power is the Oireachtas, the Irish Parliament: that is, the Oireachtas, not government ministers and not court judges, decides what is to have the status of law.
But by neglecting this fact and adhering to the Common Law fiction, certain measures are allowed: for example, the recognition by the courts of corporations as legal entities which enables Shell to go to court seeking the commission of Irish citizens to jail.

The “Rossport Five”, Micheal O. Seighin, Vincent McGrath, Philip McGrath, Willie Corduff and Brendan Philbin, were jailed in June 2005 for refusing access to their land by Shell employees for the purpose of constructing the pipeline through their land, even though the Constitution gives an inviolable right to private property. Even so, the reason for their committal was not in fact failing to abide by executive purchase orders and access orders signed by the Minister for Natural Resources, but contempt of court, refusal to abide by the Justice McMenamin’s order that the Five undertake to stop preventing Shell employees accessing their land.
What is seen here is the tacit acknowledgement that such executive orders in fact contravene the Constitution and cannot be legally enforced, and that anyone who refuses to abide by such an order is well within their rights.

The Constitution also says that it is the duty of the State to protect its citizens from attack. By allowing this unprecedented and experimental pipeline through a residential area, the State is in breach of this requirement. The safety review commissioned by the Centre for Public Inquiry from Accufacts Inc. states that the high pressure potential of the pipeline coupled with the unpredictable compositions associated with gas field production, significantly increase the risk of pipe failure.
Added to this is the fact that the Quantified Risk Assessment (QRA), which the Government has used to attempt to mollify public opposition, is inappropriate for this pipeline, as its experimental nature means that there are no data available from other examples to evaluate it.

There has been no definition of maximum pipeline pressure: Shell has spoken of the pipeline being designed to remain well above the foreseeable operating limits, but there has been no actual documentation of the maximum pipeline pressure. The fact that the pipeline has been designed to withstand 350 barsof pressure can only add to concerns that the company simply do not know what the maximum pressure will be.
Shell’s claims that it is prohibitively difficult and expensive to locate the processing plant offshore, and of the dangers that would be posed to its operatives by the allegedly uniquely hazardous conditions offshore, are not convincing.

The State’s controversial deal with Marathon Oil in the 60’s, though described as one-off, set the pattern for later administrations in its exceeding generosity with public funds. Despite Justin Keating’s (Minister for Industry and Commerce in the Fine Gael-Labour coalition) efforts in 1975 to establish a State oil company which would ensure future State control of Irish resources, its has been the consistent policy of governments since that time to reduce legal restrictions on the exploration and exploitation of Ireland’s natural resources, to the point where, today, Ireland has the most permissive regime in the world.
In 1987 the Fianna Fail Energy Minister (and now convicted felon) Ray Burke eliminated State royalties and allowed oil companies to offset all their operating expenses, backdated 25 years, against the 50 % corporation tax rate, no matter where in the world these expenses accrued.

In 1992 then Minister for Finance, and current Taoiseach or prime minister in the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrat government, Bertie Ahern, further cut the corporation tax rate to 25 %; specified that, whereas under the deal with Marathon over the Kinsale field in 1960 the Irish state could buy gas at a bulk discount, gas or oil now had to be purchased from the companies at market price (meaning in effect a total surrender of control over resources).
And further extended the amount of time an oil company could sit on its licensed area without drilling a single well, meaning that large areas of Ireland’s shore were effectively alienated for up to 30 years from Irish sovereignty into the ownership of private concerns.

At the same time as oil companies have been ceded greater and greater control over Irish natural resources, and even of huge areas of sovereign territory, successive governments have gone out of their way to prevent the development of native exploration and production expertise. Justin Keating proposed the founding of a State energy corporation in 1975, but the Fine Gael-Labour coalition was voted from office before this could be implemented.
Des O’Malley, Keating’s successor as Minister for Industry and Commerce in the new Fianna Fail government, was opposed to the idea, and when the government reluctantly founded the Irish National Petroleum Corporation in 1979 in the context of the 1978-9 oil crisis, the government expressly prevented it from engaging in exploration or production.

In 1996, when Enterprise Oil (soon to become the property of Royal Dutch Shell) discovered the Corrib Gas Field, it became clear that the find was very large, but Enterprise’s rig was inadequate to deal with the pressure at the wellhead. When Enterprise returned in 1998 with a larger rig, they returned also with another demand: that Irish workers be squeezed out.
Enterprise’s Irish director, John McGoldrick, claimed that the (unionized and highly organized) Irish rig workers were requesting wages “way in excess of industry norms”.

When Irish dockworkers, in sympathy with the oil workers, prevented Enterprise from bringing pipes in through their Foynes base, McGoldrick approached Fianna Fail’s Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Michael Woods, requesting permission to remove the Corrib operation to Scotland. The Minister obliged. Since then many Irish oil workers have never again worked in the industry.
Since 1998, under the same government, the corporation tax rate has been halved again to 12.5 %, meaning that the Irish taxpayer now funds the oil companies that drill in Irish waters for Irish oil and gas, to an even greater extent than before.

Examining the laws introduced by various governments when they have been confronted with the obstacle to “progress” represented by the Constitution, for example the Gas Act of 2000 or the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 2004, one sees that they have been devised not as measures to specify and strengthen protections given in the Constitution, intended to ensure that these protections apply to all citizens equally regardless of circumstances, but instead as emergency legislation, acts of political expediency undertaken not with the best interests of the citizenry in mind but instead those of timeserving politicians with no allegiance to the country to which they owe their position.
They see the democratic process as a means to get into power, and a legitimisation for any decision they should decide to make, and regarding people as ignorant of their own best interests determine them to be unentitled to object to what is decided in their name.

Even where the much-touted process of “public consultation” takes place, when large projects are forced onto small communities that have been deprived, from the same principle of political expediency, of the most basic services, the opinions of mere people can be safely ignored as long as there is the appearance of consultation, an empty ritual with no bearing on a decision that has been made beforehand.
Ultimately, politicians who flourish in an environment which encourages subservience and the knowing of one’s place can be relied on to pay full heed to big powers and their interests, such as big oil, construction corporations such as Halliburton subsidiary Brown and Root, and the automotive industry. The State, having wilfully tied its own hands in energy policy matters, now acts at the behest of big oil.

There is no mechanism whereby the State can ascertain to its own satisfaction the accuracy of the prospection data presented to it by the oil companies, because it does not care about the accuracy of the data; instead, the State makes its decisions based on what big oil decides it needs to see, because the imperative is to break down every obstacle in the way of those who run the world market.
What is most objectionable about this process is the attitude of elected governments, who first of all clear laws from under the “free market” and then pontificate about its inevitability.

For more information, read the Centre for Public Enquiry’s report, The Great Corrib Gas Controversy, at http://www.publicinquiry.ie/pdf/Fiosru_2_LOW_RES_Final.pdf.
See also the Shell to Sea website at www.corribsos.com, and the Tara Foundation site at www.tara-foundation.org.