Enterprise denies plans for Scottish base for Corrib

Enterprise Oil, which believes it has discovered a huge gas field 35 miles off the west coast, has denied claims that thousands…

Enterprise Oil, which believes it has discovered a huge gas field 35 miles off the west coast, has denied claims that thousands of jobs could be lost to the west of Ireland if it decides to use a Scottish port as its main operations base.

Enterprise Oil expects to announce within the next month whether it will begin the £500 million (€635 million) development of the Corrib Field, which it claims is the biggest gas field off the coast of Ireland with the capacity to supply gas for the entire Irish market.

Enterprise Oil general manager, Mr John McGoldrick said the company had already spent more than £50 million on exploration of the field, which is located 35 miles west of Achill Island.

If the company proceeds, it envisages the construction of a gas pipeline from the west to the east coast which could reduce energy bills and provide a huge boost to local industries.

READ MORE

Mr McGoldrick said that the company expected to have spent £80 million on the project by the end of the summer, by which time a final decision on whether to develop the field will be taken.

"Considering the costs involved so far, it is one hell of a gamble," he said. He said only one gas field had been discovered out of 130 drilled sites in Irish waters.

If the plan goes ahead, the company could supply gas to the domestic market by the year 2003. By that stage, it is anticipated that 80 per cent of Ireland's energy needs will be in gas form.

He denied claims by the SIPTU trade union that the main operations base for the project would be located at Ayr in Scotland, pointing out that Enterprise Oil had considered using Rossaveel in Galway, Killybegs in Donegal and a number of ports in the North.

"We don't have our operations base in Ayr and we are trying our best to use local infrastructure wherever possible," said Mr McGoldrick.

He said that the Kinsale Gas Field would be completely exploited by 2003 and that Ireland would have to import gas from Scotland.

"This looks like a very exciting discovery and it is in an area that is very, very under-explored," he said. "We were looking for oil and we did not find any, but we drilled down deeper and found this gas field. The quality of the gas is superb and we think we have something in the region of the Kinsale field."

He said that the gas market in Ireland was concentrated on the east coast and the company would have to find a way to land the gas and pipe it, if the project went ahead. "There would be quite a lot of opportunities for regional development from a gas pipeline going across Ireland," he said.

Recently, a leading trade union official in the west of Ireland claimed that Ireland would lose out financially because much of the £500 million involved in the development of the field would be spent in Scotland.

"A pipeline through the west is only a crumb off the table compared to the massive economic benefits that the people of the west and Ireland are missing out on," said Mr Padraig Campbell, the public relations officer for SIPTU's offshore committee.

He claimed Ireland would be buying back its own gas and would receive none of the spin-offs in terms of services.