The Rossport 5 in the Bigger Picture

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Sunday August 21, 2005 16:13 by Paul

The continued imprisonment of the Rossport 5 has as much to do with the global scramble for carbon fuels as it does with the gas reserves in the Corrib field.

The intransigence of the Shell Corporation with regard to the ‘Rossport 5’, and the people of Rossport in general, appears incomprehensible to many. The continued incarceration of the five men is a direct result of Shell’s unwillingness to relent on its injunction restraining opponents of the onshore processing plant from opposing the construction work through direct action.

Notwithstanding Shell’s many calls for considered dialogue, it refuses to countenance rescinding the injunction, which would see the men set free and would allow the community in Rossport to move forward with their campaign for an offshore processing plant.

It is clear that Shell’s continued obstinacy is not advancing their cause at all, and so one naturally looks for a reason that could justify their chosen course of action. Some have opined that Shell, quite reasonably, will not relent on the issue of the injunction as it would weaken their legal position, this is nonsense. The real reason for Shell’s unwillingness to relent on the injunction is that it would weaken their strategic position and their semi-feudal claim to the natural gas reserves of the West coast of Ireland.

An exacerbating factor in the perennial local conflict that the dispute between the people of Rossport and Shell represents is the increased global scramble for carbon fuels. Michael Klare has pointed out that in the coming ten to twenty years the global demand for carbon fuels will progressively exceed the world’s capacity to supply such fuels.

In this climate the battle for untapped and traditional carbon fuel reserves is driving much of the agenda of global power politics – hence the war in Iraq, sabre-rattling at Iran on the pretext concerns about their nuclear programme, increased tensions between China and Japan and so on.

Industry experts are aware that the global oil supply is close to peaking, they are also aware that natural gas reserves are likely to last longer than oil supplies. Hence the obstinacy of Shell in Rossport is driven more by the contingencies of global geo-politics than it is by the desire to retain a strong legal position, or even out of malice.

Thus, while the conflict in Rossport is driven in part by a large multinationals rapacious pursuit of profit, it also has a far more strategic element underlying it. Appreciating the ‘bigger picture’, as it were, should benefit those opposed to Shell’s bullying in Rossport and assist in the development of a broader struggle against the tyranny and short-sightedness of the social system which spawned this parochial conflict.

See Michael Klare, “The Intensifying Global Struggle for Energy” at:
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21969/