Shell E&P Ireland said yesterday that it cannot comply with a ministerial order to dismantle an illegally welded section of the Corrib gas pipeline because of "protest action".
The company has not complied with the direction issued by Minister for the Marine Noel Dempsey almost two months ago, following a report on the illegal welding in The Irish Times.
Just under 3km of onshore pipeline, designed to link the Corrib gas terminal at Bellanaboy with the gas field 70km offshore, had been welded without ministerial consent.
In late July Mr Dempsey told Shell it would be subject to closer monitoring by a new technical advisory group. Shell E&P Ireland admitted a "technical breach" had occurred.
The company, which has suspended all work on the project, is blaming the Shell to Sea campaign for restricting access to its sites in north Mayo. But campaign spokesman Dr Mark Garavan said the company had never requested this access. Any such request would be facilitated, he said. The campaign had also agreed to any essential maintenance work once this was facilitated through the Corrib project monitoring group.
This group is chaired by Mayo county manager Des Mahon to oversee construction of the €900 million project. The campaign has called on the project monitoring group to take a more active role in ensuring that there is no risk to the environment on the terminal site at Bellanaboy. This follows a request by Shell to install water treatment units at the Bellanaboy terminal.
The campaign said it would seem to indicate that Shell's methodologies for managing water from the excavation programme were not succeeding, and it cast doubt on their capacity to continue peat extraction safely. Shell's request to install water treatment units reflected this failure, the campaign said.
In response, Shell said it had at all times acted in full consultation with all relevant statutory bodies and had "consulted closely" with the project-monitoring committee in relation to environmental monitoring of the site.
The additional treatment of water from the area of excavated mineral soils was considered necessary to ensure that the water quality leaving the site complied with the limits set for the site, "particularly as we face into the winter months".
Without unhindered access to the construction site there was a possibility that the water quality running off the site might be affected, the company said.