Gas is expected to come later this year to the Shell terminal in Bellanaboy, Co Mayo, through the controversial pipeline that rises from the Atlantic seabed 83km offshore.
The terminal is currently being commissioned and tested. As gas passes through the terminal, impurities will be removed and pressure adjusted before the gas is pumped into the Bord Gáis network.
Outside the terminal, at Glengad and Aghoose, the start and end points of the 4.9km tunnel under Sruwaddacon Bay, work to restore the landscape is under way.
Protesters are no longer at the gates, although an abandoned protesters’ van still sits outside.
One contractor, Lars Wagner, died during tunnelling in 2013; the Health and Safety Authority investigation results are still pending, as is the inquest.
Production cannot begin until the project gets a revised atmospheric- and marine- emissions licence from the Environmental Protection Agency. This decision is expected by early September - the go-ahead to pump gas could come a month after that.
That would be almost 20 years since the Corrib field was discovered, in 1996.
This series explores the project’s legacy for the north Mayo community in which it is based, for the businesses that participated in the project and for Ireland as a whole.
