The Saga of the Corrib Gas Field

The story of Shell's on shore gas terminal development in Erris, Mayo, and proposed explotiation of the Corrib Gas Field.

“There is a village known to the poor travelling people of Ireland as ‘Baile an ghra Dia’, the village of the Love of God, or if you like, the charitable place, for the Irish name for charity is ‘Love of God’. It was there that I first heard stories of good deeds done by seals. The village is on the north cost of Mayo, in poor and isolated country, so poor and isolated that the beggars and poor travelling people and the wandering story-tellers used to come there in their hundreds, knowing that they were sure of food and a place to sleep by the fire. They were valued as strangers, for their voices or their talents or for the news they brought, and even now if you meet a North Mayo man on the road you should be willing to tell him of your purpose.”

At least so says ‘The People of the Sea’, David Thomson’s book on the legend of the selchie. But open those dewy eyes and wipe away that romantic mist, for this is planet Earth circa 2004 and this tale is of toxic terminals not speaking seals. One stranger sure isn’t getting a welcome to the North West of Mayo and that’s Shell, the world’s foremost perpetrator of environmental injustice.

The saga of the Corrib Gas Field began with it’s discovery in 1996, 70km north west off the coast of Mayo.
• It’s owned by a consortium consisting of Shell, Statoil and Marathon Oil.
  
• It’s been 4 years now since Energy Enterprise Ireland, – a subsidiary of Shell, first applied for planning permission for a on shore terminal to exploit this field.
• Four years in the planning process during which time objectors, in the words of then Minister for Marine and Natural Resources Frank Fahey, “held up progress”.
• Objectors including local residents, conservation groups, trade unionists, fishermen and environmentalists.

This article is going to outline the magnitude of the ecological threat facing one of the most beautifully desolate parts of Ireland, and the seas off it’s shore. Later articles will look at other aspects of this issue.

THE DEVELOPMENT:

Firstly you have a high pressure raw gas pipeline coming on shore and going for five miles through the village of Rossport, past houses and some other villages to the on shore terminal and cleaning station at Ballinaboy Bridge. There is also to be an adjoining pipeline containing discharge from the terminal, pumped back out into the semi-enclosed Broadhaven Bay, as well as electric cables. These high pressure pipelines have raised fears about the potential for an explosion among the people who are, should the development go ahead, to be it’s close neighbours.

Then you have the terminal itself, which will be cleaning the gas of impurities, including heavy metals and toxins like lead, nickel, magnesium, phosphorous, arsenic and mercury, and pumping all this out to sea. The terminal will be powered by a huge internal power plant, burning off condensed uncleaned gas, through nine chimneys, four of them around 140 feet high. Obviously issuing forth a massive amount of the greenhouse gases which cause global warming.


THE CONSTRUCTION:

The terminal is being built in a bog, so construction involves the removal of 650,000 cubic metres of peat and it’s transferral to be spread on another bog 11km away. This poses three immediate problems, firstly the risk of landslide where the peat is stored, secondly the removal of the rain absorbing turf in a area which get’s on average 200 days of rain a year, this opens the door to flooding, and finally the traffic of what one local activist has calculated as 800 truck journeys for six months along poor, narrow, winding, country roads.Another issue to come up in the planning hearings is the unstable nature of daube material beneath the peat, which poses further landslide potential.


THE MARINE ECOLOGY:

The toxic waste from the terminal is to be pumped into Broadhaven Bay. Leading the Erris Inshore Fishermen’s Association to be one of the objecting parties in the planning permission process, fearing the destruction of stocks of salmon and crab upon which much of the local economy depends.

According to state heritage agency An Duchas “Broadhaven Bay supports an internationally important number of Brent Geese” as well as regionally important populations of other birds.

According to Friends of the Irish Environment the exact point where the pipeline comes on shore is a rare sand martin nesting colony.

The Environmental Impact Statement made to the Department of the Marine by Shell as part of the process to gain a licence for off-shore work claimed there was "no evidence that Broadhaven Bay is of particular importance to cetaceans (whales and dolphins)". Against this the Irish Whale and Dolphin group pointed out the historic and anecdotal evidence to the contrary, that is sightings by fishermen, and the former presence in the area of major whaling stations.

However it now turns out that Shell commissioned a study by University College Cork's Coastal and Marine Resources Centre which found the exact opposite from the claim Shell made in it’s environmental impact statement. Shell neglected to mention the study, though the lack of concrete data on whales and dolphins in their statement was criticised by the department. The U.C.C. research team recorded over 220 sightings of seven whale and dolphin species, plus sightings of two seal species and marine mammals such as basking sharks and a sea turtle in Broadhaven Bay and north-west Mayo waters. This including sightings of the relatively rare Risso’s Dolphin. It found that Broadhaven bay was an important breading and rearing area for dolphins and whales.

The significance of this is that Shell has already been carrying out underwater blasting and seismic surveys, which are detrimental to whales, seals and dolphins as they sense through sound and the noise generated through blasting and surveys drives them away, disorientates them and disrupts feeding and breeding patterns, in all probability causing a population reduction. Various Irish and EU laws make for the conservation of these species, but don’t hold you breath waiting for the government to enforce them.

THE CURRENT SITUATION

As it stands after two public hearings in the spring and winter of 2002 An Board Pleanala announced it’s decision to deny planning permission to the onshore terminal in late April 2003. However a year later on April 30th 2004 Mayo County Council approved planning permission for a revised plan, which principally altered the plans in regard to storage of removed peat. Appeals have again been lodged and this should be coming before An Board Pleanala again soon.