The Shell to Sea Campaign and its Legacy
By William Hederman
The imposition of the Corrib Gas project on a remote community in north Mayo is a dark chapter in Irish history, but the story of resistance to the project is one that has inspired many, deterred corporations and set a precedent for direct action against fossil fuel industry. Campaigner, and freelance journalist and photographer William Hederman draws a thread from the Shell to Sea campaign to climate activism today.
“Immense reputational damage has been done to Ireland abroad” by the Shell to Sea campaign, Pat Rabbitte declared solemnly in June 2012.[1] The then Minister for Energy and Natural Resources made this claim as he revealed that delays caused by protests against the Corrib Gas project had tripled the cost of the project to €3 billion.
Rabbitte’s argument was that the delays were deterring the fossil fuel industry from investing in Ireland. This was intended as a criticism, but in effect it was a powerful tribute to the community-led campaign, which by then had been resisting Shell’s inland refinery and high-pressure pipeline in north Mayo for more than a decade. The struggle and the delays and cost overruns it caused sent a powerful message to corporations and to the Irish state: if you try to force through dirty or dangerous infrastructure without community consent, you will pay a price.
““The prospect or threat of civil disobedience and direct action was a key factor in stopping fracking in Ireland before it had begun.””
It was a message that has served other rural communities. The prospect or threat of civil disobedience and direct action was a key factor in stopping fracking in Ireland before it had begun. Part of the Shell to Sea legacy is the inspiration and strategic advice it passed on, in particular to the movement that brought about Ireland’s historic ban on fracking in 2017.
While Shell to Sea failed in its ultimate aim of stopping the inland refinery, it did achieve several key victories, including forcing major changes to the project. The struggle shone a harsh light on democracy in contemporary Ireland, highlighting the obscene power of the corporate sector, its capture of the planning, regulatory and political systems and the injustice and violence the state will perpetrate on behalf of corporate profit.
The campaign also created and informed a national debate on democratic control of energy and natural resources, which is increasingly relevant today in the context of climate and energy crises. And the direct action that was so central to the struggle in Mayo offers an inspiration and a template for climate activism today.
Experimental project
In 1996, Enterprise Energy discovered gas 83 km off the coast of Mayo. By 1999, the company was proposing to bring the gas ashore through the remote community of Rossport. Local people initially welcomed the news but soon became alarmed when they discovered the company had an experimental, cost-saving plan to pump raw, odourless gas at extremely high pressure from the well head directly to a refinery 9 km inland. This was to be an “upstream” production pipeline – usually only found on the sea bed or in uninhabited areas – that would run just 1.4 metres under farmland and roads, close to people’s homes.
In 2000, local residents lodged planning objections with Mayo County Council, marking the start of a long and torturous journey of engaging with state agencies and other official bodies. It gradually became clear to local people that these bodies and structures, which they had assumed would protect them, were instead serving the interests of big business.
In January 2005, the campaign name Shell to Sea was adopted, an expression of the core demand that gas be processed at sea, in line with international practice. Enterprise had been bought by Royal Dutch Shell in 2002 and in the same year the new owner was granted 34 compulsory acquisition orders to access private land for the laying of its high-pressure pipeline.
Rossport Five
By 2005, local people had begun engaging in direct action, obstructing Shell staff from entering farmland. This led, in June 2005, to the High Court jailing five people indefinitely for contempt of court for refusing to comply with orders to facilitate the company. The Rossport Five spent three months in prison, bringing the campaign to global attention, with local Shell to Sea campaigns forming across Ireland, and bringing the project to a standstill for more than a year.
Hundreds of people maintained a constant picket at the refinery site in Bellanaboy. After 15 months, a huge Garda contingent was bussed in and in October 2006, the blockade was broken by force, resulting in numerous injuries.
The state and Shell were determined not to repeat the PR disaster of jailing people. A Garda “no-arrest” policy was outlined by local superintendent Joe Gannon in the Garda Review (November 2006): “There were no arrests. That was part of our strategy: we did not want to facilitate anyone down there with a route to martyrdom.”.[2] Instead of being arrested – as the law stipulates – those standing or sitting in the way of Shell’s trucks were baton charged, kicked, punched and thrown into ditches. Several international human rights organisations raised the alarm about violence and intimidation from gardaí and later from Shell’s private security contractor, IRMS.[3]
Demonisation
Garda violence was cheered on by prominent commentators such as Kevin Myers, who in 2006 wrote in the Irish Independent that the Garda response to protestors saying the rosary at the refinery gates should have been to baton charge them.[4] The following year he wrote: “Shell has been scandalously remiss in not employing someone to bump off a few of these fellows.”
Following the jailing of the Rossport Five, Shell and the gardaí had gone to ground and beefed up their PR offensive. This, among other factors, led to the emergence of a mainstream narrative that portrayed protestors as anti-progress, technology-fearing rural folk who had been ‘got at’ by a motley crew of republicans, socialists, eco-warriors and other extremist ‘outsiders’ and that together they were preventing a well-meaning, job-creating company from building an essential piece of infrastructure.
Central to the softening up of public opinion was the tried and trusted Garda strategy of feeding smear stories to crime correspondents. This was exemplified by a Sunday World headline in October 2006, ‘IRA take control of protests’, over a fantastical, unsubstantiated story by celebrity crime reporter Paul Williams.[5]
Solidarity Camp
The Rossport Solidarity Camp was established immediately after the jailing of the Rossport Five in 2005, in response to a call from local people for support. It became a hugely important fixture in the campaign, as the physical embodiment of an abstract idea, namely solidarity; as the venue for memorable political gatherings; a place where friends were made and alliances forged; and a space for political education and the exchange of ideas and tactics, between local people and activists visiting from around Ireland and across the world.
Throughout the Corrib saga, mainstream debate and coverage tended to balance the health and safety concerns of local people against the need to bring the gas ashore quickly in the “national interest”. In response, the campaign highlighted oil and gas licensing terms so heavily weighted in favour of fossil fuel companies that the public benefit is almost non-existent. The Shell-led consortium would be selling the gas to Irish consumers at the international market price and would pay no royalties. The only state take would be a 25% tax on profits, but only after a 100% write-off of costs, including the cost of previous, unsuccessful drilling.
The ‘Great Gas Giveaway’ became a key element of the campaign, creating and informing a national debate on Ireland’s mismanagement of its resources. And while Shell to Sea was not a climate campaign – it demanded the gas be processed safely rather than calling for it be left in the ground – it foreshadowed the climate justice movement in its demand that people’s lives and the environment not be put at risk for the sake of shareholder profit or economic growth and in its dogged awareness-raising about the huge harms that result from the fossil fuel industry’s excessive power and influence.
““a standout feature of the campaign was the central role played by direct action. This included mass blockades, lock-ons, sit-ins, building occupations, obstructing machinery, removing equipment and more””
Direct action
The campaign against Corrib Gas involved a broad diversity of tactics – mass protests, legal actions, planning objections, political lobbying and more – but a standout feature of the campaign was the central role played by direct action. This included mass blockades, lock-ons, sit-ins, building occupations, obstructing machinery, removing equipment and more. Shell to Sea was ahead of its time in obstructing gas infrastructure – it would be another ten years before the European-wide climate movement began blockading the gas industry.
Despite years of fearless struggle, international solidarity and a swathe of scientific evidence on their side, ultimately the campaign could not overcome the combined might of Shell, state agencies, successive governments, Mayo County Council and Gardaí, all facilitated by media organisations which either failed dismally to investigate and report or which actively participated in the feeding frenzy of disinformation and demonisation.
Inspiration
Gas finally began flowing through the refinery on New Year's Eve in 2015, almost 20 years after the field was discovered. Despite failing in its core objective of preventing the inland refinery and high-pressure pipeline, Shell to Sea did record several achievements. Shell was forced to re-route its high-pressure pipeline, after An Bord Pleanála vindicated campaigners in 2009 by ruling that the proposed pipeline route was unsafe.
““The protests delayed the project by about 12 years and caused a four-fold increase in cost[6]. In 2018 Shell sold its stake in Corrib, at a loss of close to €1 billion.””
The protests delayed the project by about 12 years and caused a four-fold increase in cost[6]. In 2018 Shell sold its stake in Corrib, at a loss of close to €1 billion.[7] While this was bad news for shareholders, it presented a precedent, an inspiration, and valuable lessons for other grassroots campaigns.
The most well-attended event at this year's Climate Camp in north Kerry was one at which veterans of several community campaigns shared their experiences and strategies for resisting fossil fuel firms. On a beautiful Saturday morning, as a curlew called from the Ballyline estuary next to the campsite, people packed into a large canvas marquee that had once formed part of the Rossport Solidarity Camp. Anti-fracking campaigners from Leitrim recounted the events leading to Ireland’s ban on fracking in 2017. They described the huge debt of gratitude they owed to Shell to Sea campaigners for the warnings, knowledge and tactical advice they had passed on at an early stage in the anti-fracking struggle. PhD research has documented the “huge impact” encounters with the Shell to Sea campaign had in “building early awareness” in the anti-fracking movement.[8]
Climate struggle
The Climate Camp took place in August next to the site of the proposed Shannon LNG terminal, through which New Fortress Energy would import gas from its fracking fields in the US, helping to lock Ireland into fossil fuels for decades. Activists from across the island of Ireland gathered to share skills and ideas for building a radical climate movement focused on direct action, and to show solidarity with the local campaigners who have been resisting Shannon LNG for 15 years.
In September, an energy security review commissioned by the government advised against a commercial LNG terminal. but at the time of writing, it was unclear whether the government would follow this advice. Minister Eamon Ryan’s department has been throwing hundreds of millions of euros at new power stations[9] and emergency generators[10] – burning a variety of fossil fuels – in a bid to keep the lights on. While households struggle with huge energy bills and the government urges people to save energy, the electricity consumption of data centres is soaring.
They now use almost 15% of the Republic’s electricity, a figure set to rise to 29% by 2028, crippling our energy system and driving up our greenhouse gas emissions.[11] The deference to Big Tech, evidenced by the government’s refusal to call a halt to data centre growth, is but one example of the government’s failure to stand up to powerful industrial polluters.
Globally, fossil fuel corporations are swimming in record profits and are investing a staggering $570 billion annually in finding and extracting more oil and gas, financed by banks and facilitated by governments.[12] There is no shortage of targets for direct action. Climate scientists’ warnings could not be any starker. To avoid catastrophic global heating, ecosystem collapse and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, drastic and rapid changes to society are required.
Governments will not take the necessary action without a decisive shift from protest to resistance. Swedish author Andreas Malm predicts that a major escalation of direct action – and even sabotage – is inevitable, as humanity’s survival instinct kicks in. But can this radicalisation happen soon enough to avert catastrophe?
The situation can feel hopeless, the odds overwhelming. Those who resisted Shell in Mayo can be an inspiration – they fought despite overwhelming odds, knowing they had science and justice on their side. And their struggle was an inspiring example of direct action as a means of seeking to shape the world in which you live.
Article originally published in Issue 9 of Rupture Magazine. Subscribe or purchase previous issues here.
Notes
[1] Seanad Éireann debate, ‘Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration: Statements’ 27 June 2012, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2012-06-27/5/
[2] Garda Review, 2006, http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/aug2007/garda_review_5.jpg
[3] Irish Examiner, ‘Policing of pipeline protest criticised’, 2007, https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30317773.html’
[4] Independent.ie, ‘Enough is enough Joe, now it's time to act, so clear the streets, clear the streets!’, 29 September 2006, https://www.independent.ie/opinion/editorial/enough-is-enough-joe-now-its-time-to-act-so-clear-the-streets-clear-the-streets-26367327.html
[5] Sunday World, ‘IRA take control of protests’, October 2006, http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/oct2006/cimg1284b.jpg
[6] Mayo News, ‘Corrib will cost €3.4 billion when completed’, https://www.mayonews.ie/news/19139-corrib-will-cost-34-billion-when-completed
[7] The Irish Times, ‘Shell counting the cost as sale of Corrib gas field completed’, 30 November 2018, https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/shell-counting-the-cost-as-sale-of-corrib-gas-field-completed-1.3715864
[8] Jamie Gorman, ‘Jumping scales and influencing outcomes: A case study of community development for environmental justice’,2019, https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/15546/
[9] Irish Times, ‘Ireland to get nine new power plants by 2024 to prevent shortages’, 4 February 2022,https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/ireland-to-get-nine-new-power-plants-by-2024-to-prevent-shortages-1.4794039
[10] Independent.ie, ‘Government to spend €350m on ‘jet engines’ to supply emergency electricity in the event of power outages’, 19 October 2022, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/government-to-spend-350m-on-jet-engines-to-supply-emergency-electricity-in-the-event-of-power-outages-42077747.html
[12] IISD Report, ‘Navigating Energy Transition’, 2022, https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2022-10/navigating-energy-transitions-mapping-road-to-1.5.pdf