Shell drilling stopped for an hour and a half

mayo | environment | news report

Friday August 06, 2010 16:24

by RSC - Rossport Solidarity Camp

Campers go out before 7am and successfully prevent workers from accessing the drilling platforms.

9 Campers wadded and kayaked out to the platforms this morning and halted work for 1 and half hours. IRMS workers eventually secured the area by pushing people away and dragging their kayaks down the estuary. Kayaks were deflated by security and some people were dangerously forced to swim in high currents. There were no arrests.

The drilling platforms are currently in a vital part of the SAC; close to bird feeding and nesting sites. At this time the estuary is also used as a migration route for Atlantic Salmon which are an Annex 1 species (the most protected EU category). They are very vulnerable to suffocation by suspended solids in the water clogging their gills and today we saw evidence of sediment spewing into the estuary from the boreholes. Movement of the platforms will also release suspended solids; endangering the supposedly protected salmon.

Please come and help us stop shell's work.

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Comments (3 of 3)

RE-TOOL THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

by Union Jack

Wed Aug 11, 2010 19:36

Shell has been doing this unjust reaction to the peoples communities and organized labour for a long time. In British Columbia in the sixties the OCAWU-- Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union shut down the Shell refinery and picketed it for months, along with pickets at all refineries, and eventually Shell Officials brought in scabs and drove trucks through the pickets and killed a worker and injured numerous others on the line. That forced a move from the B.C.Federation of Labour, who then took over and a fight back resulted where the monopoly rulers began getting labour injunctions and using their bosses law to discriminate against the picket lines by reducing them to ineffectiveness, then court ordering them back to work.

They insisted that economy was the reason by which they meant their protits to pollute the environment. Then they began firing the workers by holding compny court firing and blacklisting of workers in the union. It was a disaster and defeat from the 'economist thinkers' point of view of the monopoly ruling classes, but to this day the movement of the future is comming into being to re-tool the entire industrial revolution towards the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity and is more power than can be used by all societies.

The workers struck not only for pollution money, but also for a clean non-poison working environment, and so from that future perspective the world's energy supply is now subject of change, much to defeat the oil companies and their monopolies over pollution for money. Strikes can win past, present and future. Organized labour in Ireland ought therefore to shut down these museum piece polluting industries and re-tool to wind, and solar power, the renewables. That is the non-pollution solution.

Great work

by Chrissie

Sat Aug 07, 2010 13:36

It takes some courage & endurance to maintain opposition to Shell's destructive intrusion into Erris, particularly in the face of unrestrained Gardaí & IRMS 'security' muscle. Beir bua!

Pictures

by RSC - RSC

Fri Aug 06, 2010 18:46

Pictures from this morning. Work stopped twice in three days. If you don't fancy getting wet there'll be lots of options when they move back onto the sand, which is the majority of the route.

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