On Monday,the 8th April, a $hell employee accidentally cut one of the gas pipes which they thought was a water pipe at the refinery.
The refinery was completed back in 2010 and has just been left to rust due to all the other delays. $hell are currently having to replace all the water pipes on site due to corrosion.
Shell investigates accidental severing of gas pipe at Corrib terminal: http://shelltosea.com/content/shell-investigates-accidental-severing-gas-pipe-corrib-terminal
$hell are also busy destroying the fields in Glengad. Please see here for latest news:
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/103296
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/103304
It’s the field we used to walk down through to get to the 2006/2007 camp in the dunes. Someone was down in Glengad earlier taking photos so there’ll be a special Glengad article up at some stage on indymedia to show people what’s going on.
In Aughoose rumours abound that the TBM is stuck in the “Dóib” – the mysterious clay-like substance underlying much of the blanket bog in the area. Dóib is well known and understood locally but Shell are always getting stuck in it.
Latest rumours:
- The grout that the TBM injects to solidify the material around it as it advances won’t mix with the dóib and so the machine is stuck.
- They are bringing in new chemicals to mix in the grout to see will it help mix with the dóib.
- They are organising to borrow a machine from the army in the Curragh, Kildare to pull the TBM out again.
- The tunnel is flooding.
- The German tunnelling engineers don’t know what to do.
- They are looking at abandoning the tunnel and going overland again
- It was just a hydraulics failure – the problem has been solved and tunnelling is underway again and will last another 13 months (rumour circulated by Shell)
- Special rumour just in! Last week the Gardaí were called into the compound to break up a fight between the German and Irish engineers over who is to blame for the TBM being stuck.
- The German engineers want their own security
Interestingly there had been no official weekly update to Minister Pat Rabbitt’s DCENR published since the 10th if January up until a couple of weeks ago. It seems like they then put up a month and a half’s worth of reports once they had the story on the TBM straight. It’s telling though that even though the machine definitely broke down (and may still be for all we know) there was no mention of this in any of these weekly reports.
Hopefully they are stuck – but usually the environment is the collateral damage for Shell mistakes – they are going through what is supposed to be a nature reserve.
For more information on what Shell is planning please see www.shelltosea.com
