By Michael McCaughan
“It was noted that development of the Corrib field may be delayed until 2004 as planning consent had been refused for the terminal. The Committee queried whether the Group had sufficiently well placed contacts with the Irish government and regulators.”
(Confidential Minutes of Shell Managing Directors, July 2002, obtained through FOIA request)
After hundreds of arrests, several months jail time and an ongoing national and international campaign, the final planning decision on the Corrib Gas project may come down to the fate of a single unoccupied dwelling and an active blanket bog protected by EU Habitats Directives. Last month’s 19-day An Bord Pleanala oral hearing into the onshore pipeline development proved an epic contest involving 120 documents and 80 submissions as the accumulated expert knowledge of local campaigners confronted the scientific certainties and ministerial consents wielded by Shell.
Chairman Martin Nolan has a formidable task ahead of him, weighing up the competing claims across the Corrib Gas divide. Local people, who have watched the project rejected and resurrected after previous oral hearings, believe that the Board will succumb to the inevitability of a project 80% complete and widely touted as a matter of national security. Shell previously sent a letter to the Board requesting “that Senior Planning Inspector, Mr Kevin Moore, is not assigned as the planning inspector in relation to this appeal.” It was Moore who rejected the project as unsuitable after a 22-day hearing in 2002. The lack of local faith in the integrity of the planning process can be understood from the interference implicit above and the statement of intent in the opening quote, which suggests lobbying pressure will be applied to the relevant State bodies.
The submissions from local citizens at the oral hearing focused on the unique nature of the pipeline, the high gas pressure involved and the lack of consultation regarding the project. There were lengthy discussions on ‘umbilical constraints’, ‘corrosion management’, ‘Smart Pigs’ and other complex technical issues which were handled with ease by local people. RPS, the consultants hired by Shell to sell the project to local people, were clearly not anticipating such rigorous examination and frequently had difficulty answering questions; ‘I didn’t say we didn’t get it” said RPS spokesman Ciaran Butler, struggling to reply to a query about an important document which was never passed on to the public, ‘I just don’t recall having it.’
Events outside the hearing affected the mood within. The sinking of Pat O’Donnell’s boat, by persons unknown, heightened tensions as local people temporarily withdrew from the hearing in solidarity. Mr Nolan, a calm, even-handed Chairman, kept things moving, admonishing both sides when informed debate threatened to slide toward pointless bickering. ‘We’re climbing the final summit today’ he said, as the hearing concluded, a note of relief in his voice. Nolan, like his predecessor Moore, was impressed at the high level of knowledge regarding complex gas-related issues “If I was here for another month there’d be something new happening every minute of every day”, he said, acknowledging the community’s permanent vigilance over the project.
The Corrib high pressure gas flow will meet an onshore Land Valve Installation (LVI) at Glengad Beach, using a mechanism which remains shrouded in mystery with known unknowns and unknown knowns that would leave Einstein reeling in confusion. What is clear is that Shell has designed a unique pipeline which, for that reason, cannot be compared to any other project in the world. ‘It’s just a pipeline like any other’ claimed Shell for three days, until, under rigorous examination, they caved in. Was it unique? “Yes’, came the simple response.
Phil Crossthwaite, a Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) consultant for Shell, criticized his clients for ‘chopping and changing’ between safety codes, something it considered ‘not particularly good practice.’ Meanwhile ABP’s Pipeline Consultant Nigel Wright expressed concern that the developer dismissed substantial risk factors such as internal corrosion, Methane Hydrate, Construction faults and Pipe instability in peat bog. In a remarkable critique of Shell’s modus operandi, Wright wondered aloud as to whether the corporation was running ‘a research and development project’ rather than a highly complex gas field requiring the highest level of health and safety guarantees. This question, coming from an expert in the field, left observers stunned.
In their submissions to the hearing, Shell refused to even consider the possibility of human failure in the project. Wright challenged the developer on the issue of what he called ‘ultra high pressure’ of 144 bar gas, almost twice the rate of normal gas transmission in Ireland and the UK and the ‘cocktail of standards’ applied to the project. The Advantica safety report, commissioned by the government in 2005, has become the government’s life raft and mantra in defending the project’s safety standards. However Advantica lays down a number of recommendations which need to be applied before the project receives its safe pass, including the need for an integrity management system prior to the construction phase of the pipeline. Another fatal flaw in depending on Advantica is that it examined a different pipeline route, a route since abandoned by the developer.
The absence of a comprehensive framework and management plan for safety and monitoring of the project led to Shell’s proposed 30-second safety plan which requires local people of all ages to walk at a pace of 2.5m per second to avoid immolation in the event of pipeline rupture. What Shell’s experts hadn’t done was walk over the peat bog, a tricky surface to navigate at any speed. Shell also assumed that shelter would be found within 30 seconds of an accident occurring. Anyone who has visited Rossport will be aware that minding sheep or cutting turf along the proposed pipeline route leaves you far from shelter. “The methodology says there is (shelter)’, insisted Shell, so shelter there must be.
Shell’s safety argument suffered irreparable damage when Cdt Patrick Boyle made his submission. Boyle, a retired bomb disposal expert, challenged Shell’s figures on ‘escape distance’ and demonstrated how public safety in this project was dependent on pipeline integrity, leaving no margin of safety from fire or explosion. The Ghislenghien disaster, a gas pipeline explosion in Belgium (July 2004) killed 24 people and injured 122, a pipeline built to the highest safety standards. Boyle advised Shell of his concerns back in 2007 and recommended an alternative route. He now believes that only the Glinsk option offers the safety zone needed to prevent major loss of life in the event of an accident. Boyle contacted RPS (Shell’s PR consultants) in 2007, offering advice on project safety but his suggestions were ignored. Boyle’s last job before retirement was to coordinate a security exercise on the gas pipeline interconnector at Gormanstown, on behalf of Bord Gais.
In one obvious oversight, Shell counted 49 dwellings in the path of the pipeline in its 2008 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). A year later Shell’s revised EIS now includes 82 dwellings, of which 79 are within the 500m death zone. One dwelling, owned by a local retired couple, is just 40 metres from the pipeline route. The couple were never consulted about the project and applied for planning permission for septic tank and restoration works to the house shortly before Shell’s latest EIS was filed.
Shell’s landfall valve installation (LVI), will reduce gas pressure from 345 bar to 144 at the point where it comes ashore. However the LVI is located on land above the beach at Glengad, leaving locals with a risk of 345 bar pressure gas coming onshore at substantially less than 500m from their homes.
Shell has opted for a thick pipeline wall to improve safety as the gas travels overland but leading pipeline safety engineer Richard Kuprewicz argued that the extra thickness brings risks of its own and is not best practice in the US. In addition, the thick pipeline, sustained by 3.79 tonnes of steel, will increase subsidence in the unstable peat bog.
In their final submission to the hearing, the Department of Energy emphasized the strategic importance of the project, stating that “a very significant part of the country’s annual gas needs could be met by the Corrib field for a number of reasons.” Maura Harrington pointed out that the company’s own figures show the gas field supplying only 40% of the country’s needs for three to five years at market prices with Shell determining the manner in which the gas is disposed.
In his final words to the oral hearing Shell senior counsel Esmond Keane cited EU Priority Habitats legislation, transposed into Irish law, which state that a development project may proceed, regardless of the ‘negative implications’ and the ‘absence of alternative solutions’ when ‘imperative reasons of overriding public interest, including those of a social and economic nature’ are at stake.’ Keane was right in one important detail, saying that ‘no other development proposal has been subject to such an amount of study and surveys over a period of time.’ What he didn’t point out is that all modifications and debate on the project has been forced upon Shell through the hard work of hundreds of local people, who have combined scientific research with civil disobedience.
Shell’s preferred onshore pipeline route will involve the laying, supervision and maintenance of the pipeline, the placement of a stone road, fencing and removal of peat. The operation of the pipeline and terminal will result in the creation of 55 direct jobs. However the preferred route may face insurmountable legal difficulties as EU priority habitats may trump energy security concerns. In its final submission, the Departments of Energy and the Environment pinpointed competing concerns which the Board will have to consider. The EU Priority Habitats Directive, Art 6.3 states that the competent national authority “shall agree to the plan or project only after having ascertained that it will not adversely affect the integrity of the site concerned and if appropriate after having obtained the opinion of the general public.”
The Department of the Environment, in its final submission, described the building of a stone road and laying of the pipeline as ‘innovative and as yet unproven’ in terms of impacts on habitats and that the construction of the permanent pipeline road through the bog ‘cannot avoid being physically intrusive.’ On the basis of these considerations, “it is not possible to say with confidence that the mitigation and reinstatement measures proposed will prevent the project from having a negative impact on the integrity of the site. In short, it is the view of this department that a reasonable scientific doubt exists as to the absence of adverse affect on the integrity of the site.” If the Board is unable to conclude with scientific confidence that the proposed development will not adversely affect the integrity of the site, ‘it cannot grant permission.’
The developer can appeal to Art 6(4) of the same Directive, which cites overriding economic and social interests but these apply only when there is no alternative solution. The people of Erris have identified the remote Glinsk site as a possible alternative. Kuprewicz described Glinsk as “….a vastly superior location option concerning health, safety, and environmental issues” before stating that “serious questions should be raised as to why this site was not evaluated when identifying site alternatives for possible consideration from the Corrib gas field.”
When pressed on the matter, Shell retreated to a briefing document prepared by Arup, a company which had previously recommended a pipeline route which would have traversed Dooncarton, scene of a disastrous 2003 landslide. The Glinsk option has the added advantage that a pipeline route would not be required as the refinery itself could be built at landfall, avoiding damage to the Glenamoy Bog Complex. “Everything is technically feasible” admitted Shell, when pressed on the issue during the hearings. .
Meanwhile just down the road from Erris, in a case which may have significant repercussions on the Corrib gas project, the State accused ABP of permitting “the deliberate destruction” of priority habitat limestone pavement at the protected Lough Corrib site in Co Galway by granting approval for the €317 million Galway city outer bypass. The issue arose in the hearing of a challenge by environmentalist Peter Sweetman to the board’s 2008 approval for the Galway bypass, excluding one connection between Gortatlevna and An Baile Nua. The outcome of this case may have a significant bearing on the decision over the pipeline route should the bypass challenge succeed.
In her final submission to the oral hearing in Belmullet, local resident Monica Muller noted that the community had tried, for over eight years, ‘to help this applicant (Shell) in making the Corrib Titanic a safer project-but all offers of help have been rejected.” As a result, Muller concluded, “I have every expectation that Mayo County Council would agree to anything this applicant demands, regardless of conditions imposed by the Board to the point of overturning conditions set by the Board.”
The An Bord Pleanala hearing confirmed what the mainstream media has resolutely refused to acknowledge; that the vast majority of local people want the gas to come ashore but consider the project doomed in its current form. Shell acknowledged during the hearings that their approach to the project followed ‘the line of least resistance’ rather than the precautionary principle, an admission which has left the Erris community in fear of their lives.
Ends.
