Significant progress has been made in recent days that may yet see a reasonable outcome to the dispute in Co Mayo over the Corrib gas pipeline. This essentially local dispute has a significance beyond the confines of its immediate vicinity and has serious national implications.
The sooner it is resolved, therefore, the better. That will not happen, however, if all that emerges from reactions to the Advantica report published this week by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources is a dialogue of the deaf.
Substantial gas deposits were confirmed in the Corrib gas field off the west coast in the late 1990s. That very good news for the country has since been largely overshadowed by, first, arguments over the degree of State involvement in developing the potential of the field and also the extent to which the people of Ireland would be the beneficiaries of the find.
That was followed by the more recent and more sharply expressed controversy over the practical implications of extracting the gas and bringing it ashore in north Mayo. Last year, five residents of the Rossport area chose to go to jail for 94 days rather than obey a court order to desist from obstructing work to that end being carried out by Shell.
Their release in September allowed for a period of reflection and calm reassessment of the safety implications of the project. That process came to fruition on Wednesday with the publication of the Advantica report which reviewed the safety of the project.
The report suggests a number of essentially modest modifications but largely comes down in favour of the project as approved. The report finds that "proper consideration was given to safety issues in the selection process for the preferred design option and the locations of the landfall, pipeline route and terminal. Quantified risk assessment techniques were used to evaluate the levels of risk to the public, and deemed to be acceptable according to recognised and relevant international criteria." It noted that the "unusually high design pressure [345 bar] resulted from a cautious approach to the pipeline design, such that the pipeline is designed to withstand the highest pressure it could possibly experience, despite the higher cost of pipeline construction". The report made 19 recommendations which Shell said yesterday it accepted fully. It also apologised for the company's failures earlier to listen sufficiently to local concerns about the project.
Shell's difficulty throughout this saga has been that the company is asked to prove a negative - that the pipeline will never blow up and no one will ever be killed. This is an argument it is as impossible to win as it is dishonest to make. Dialogue devoid of inflammatory language and extreme and improbable scenarios is the only way forward and objectors should accept this. Shell, as we report today, appears willing to examine alternative routes for the pipeline. The company should do so with dispatch. This project needs to move forward.
