Shell to Sea

[dowling]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0416/oil_gas.html

Sinn Féin to table oil and gas licences motion
Updated: 18:49, Saturday, 16 April 2011

Sinn Féin is calling for changes to the revenue and licensing terms governing oil and gas exploration.


Aengus Ó Snodaigh - Wants radical change to licencing system

Six One News: SF in oil exploration motion

Sinn Féin is calling for changes to the revenue and licensing terms governing oil and gas exploration.
The party has published the text of a Private Members' Motion it will table in the Dáil on Tuesday.
It will call for the consents and licenses for the Corrib gas field, and exploration license for Lough Allen, to be immediately revoked pending a full review of all license and taxation issues.
The motion also calls for the State to take a 51% share in all gas and oil finds, for the establishment of a state exploration company, and for a 50% tax on profits and a 7.5% royalty to be imposed.
Sinn Féin TD for Dublin South Central Aengus Ó Snodaigh said: 'Oil and gas companies in Ireland are given among the most generous terms in the world, which means only a small proportion of the value of the deposits will come to the Irish people unless there is a radical change.'

A bit draconian for me but still I am glad SF have raised this issue.

More socialist pap from SF. With this country in the biggest recession since the Wall Street Crash it makes perfect sense for a foreign company to take all the risks of exploration and the costs that go with it. And now these clowns want us to run the risk of paying for it

I suppose they will be raising the national pension reserve for exploration costs?

Well you couldn't really say capitalism has been hitting highs recently. But because some one calls for a degree of state profits doesn't have to equate with socialism.
Anyway were the dangers of what's going on not referred to? Isn't the danger to people and disregard of them what the protests have been about?

[muppet]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0416/oil_gas.html

Sinn Féin to table oil and gas licences motion
Updated: 18:49, Saturday, 16 April 2011

Sinn Féin is calling for changes to the revenue and licensing terms governing oil and gas exploration.


Aengus Ó Snodaigh - Wants radical change to licencing system

Six One News: SF in oil exploration motion

Sinn Féin is calling for changes to the revenue and licensing terms governing oil and gas exploration.
The party has published the text of a Private Members' Motion it will table in the Dáil on Tuesday.
It will call for the consents and licenses for the Corrib gas field, and exploration license for Lough Allen, to be immediately revoked pending a full review of all license and taxation issues.
The motion also calls for the State to take a 51% share in all gas and oil finds, for the establishment of a state exploration company, and for a 50% tax on profits and a 7.5% royalty to be imposed.
Sinn Féin TD for Dublin South Central Aengus Ó Snodaigh said: 'Oil and gas companies in Ireland are given among the most generous terms in the world, which means only a small proportion of the value of the deposits will come to the Irish people unless there is a radical change.'

A bit draconian for me but still I am glad SF have raised this issue.

More socialist pap from SF. With this country in the biggest recession since the Wall Street Crash it makes perfect sense for a foreign company to take all the risks of exploration and the costs that go with it. And now these clowns want us to run the risk of paying for it

I suppose they will be raising the national pension reserve for exploration costs?

Well you couldn't really say capitalism has been hitting highs recently. But because some one calls for a degree of state profits doesn't have to equate with socialism.
Anyway were the dangers of what's going on not referred to? Isn't the danger to people and disregard of them what the protests have been about?

As I'm sure the Shinners here here will testify I am a long way from being a socialist, however the Corrib Gas license was a complete rip-off. No matter how you look at it giving away an asset for nothing is the worst possible return. That is not an attack on Shell as they weren't involved at the time.

[Lar Naparka]

Ballina and Crossmolina are connected and Ballyhaunis is dependent on Dawn meats signing an anchor agreement. Castlebar and Westport are included on Phase III of Bord Gais Networks New Towns project. As with any project a new town is only connected if there is an anchor load to connect, BGN have to pay for the pipe.

Sorry for bringing facts into this

Arrah, don't be sorry at all; if board members here had to stay with facts all the time things would be very boring indeed.
Besides, while facts are, well, facts the interpretations to be taken from them are a different mater entirely.
There are another number of facts that I feel should be considered in the present context.
Firstly, I wrote:
Throw in the fact that plans ...............to hook Mayo towns up to the  mains pipeline  appear to have been shelved and you'll see why local interests see little benefit in for them  in the latest developments.

The last bolded bit is my salient point.
Also, I did not state that no Mayo towns will or would be linked to the mains or that plans to link up a number of (named) towns have been abandoned.

Now, according to Arup's website:*
Since September 2000 Arup has been working, on behalf of BGE, on the Mayo-Galway Pipeline. ........the construction of the pipeline from the Galway City offtake to the terminal at Bellanaboy Bridge in Co Mayo started in May 2005 and was completed on schedule in October 2006.
In other words, work on the construction of the MAYO/Galway line began almost 11 years ago and the relevant part was completed almost 5 years ago.
At present two towns are online, with another one being actively considered.
That is a very long way short of what was implied when Arup began work.
It is my clear recollection that a massive publicity was mounted to sell the benefits of what the pipeline would bring to the people of Mayo.
To be very fair to Enterprise, most of the promotion came from government sources.
It should be noted that Enterprise were very unhappy with the government's handling of the entire project and the former CEO, Brian O'Cathain, said after leaving office that in his opinion the government should have been sued for continued breaches of contract.

Now, more than a decade after they were led to believe they were going to get mains gas on tap, people along the route are still waiting with the strong probability that their towns are going to fail feasibility benchmarks. 
I think it is quite reasonable to repeat "local interests see little benefit in for them in the latest developments."


BTW, in relation to the deal between Shell and the government, which was the subject of my original post, Shell's policy is to sell the gas at prevailing market prices and put it on the open market. It will be treated no differently to that coming from external sources. It will bring no benefit by way of reduced prices to the people of Mayo or the nation as a whole. That's my understanding anyway as I have heard of no recent changes to that policy.

*http://www.arup.ie/index.jsp?p=115&n=255

[Mayo4Sam]

Lar I'll check out exactly what towns are being considered but I do know any Mayo town with an anchor load will get gas, BGN have to be able to show that a project is financially viable, after that for a pipe to be brought down a particular road in the town 20% of the residents on the road need to sign up

[muppet]

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/household-gas-bills-set-to-rocket-514583.html

Great to be able to have our own gas.

[magpie seanie]

We should have taken this gas field back into State ownership, by whatever means required, a long time ago. What's the worst that could happen - get fcuked out of the EU and then we could tell them where to go with their loans? Win-win.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Lar I'll check out exactly what towns are being considered but I do know any Mayo town with an anchor load will get gas, BGN have to be able to show that a project is financially viable, after that for a pipe to be brought down a particular road in the town 20% of the residents on the road need to sign up

Seem to remember them digging up half of Castlebar's streets and roads to put in pipes, then abandoned it leaving the town in a mess. Wasn't Ballina to be included too. Am I imagining this.

[Maguire01]

Surprised no one else has posted this - totally undermines the credibility of these women in my opinion.

Ombudsman says Mayo arrest tape was altered

The Garda Ombudsman Commission has found that parts of a recording of the arrest of two women, about whom Gardaí were alleged to have made sexually threatening remarks, were deleted and overwritten.

The women were arrested during an anti-Corrib gas pipleine protest in Co Mayo earlier this year.

The Shell to Sea group has said it does not accept that the recording was tampered with.

It has emerged that five Gardaí who were investigated after the release of the tape will not face criminal charges, but a disciplinary investigation involving two of them will continue.

The recording was made following the arrest of two women at a Shell to Sea demonstration on 31 March this year.

This afternoon the Garda Ombudsman Commission published its interim report into the incident.

The comments were recorded on a pocket camcorder seized from one of the women when they were arrested.

A garda put it in his pocket and it was unknowingly left in record mode - and this recorded a conversation between the gardaí in their vehicle.

The gardaí were heard joking about raping the women if they did not give their names and addresses. They also commented that one of the women - a US citizen - would be deported if she did not co-operate.

The report says a transcript of the recording 'supports these allegations.'

However, the investigation says it established that at no stage were the two women personally threatened about rape or deportation by the gardaí, because 'they did not hear the conversation at the time'.

The report says that it was suggested that another garda may have overheard one of the women using the word rape 'prior to the word being used by any garda member'.

A detective garda told the inquiry that one of the women shouted that the gardaí could rape them as they were being arrested.

The Ombudsman inquiry said it could not corroborate this statement from the recording because high winds distorted the sound.

Files deleted

The interim report also found that while footage of the original incident was recovered, parts of the recording were deleted and overwritten.

It said that a 'sequence of deletions from the device had taken place' before it was handed to gardaí.

Gardaí said they were unable to take possession of the device until 14 April and that it was sent to the Forensic Science Service in Northern ireland for analysis.

The FSNI said six files had been deleted from the device between 13 April and 14 April, with other files being created and overwritten during the same period.

'These files were not capable of being retrieved in a viewable format because of the damage caused to the files by the overwriting process.'

Shell to Sea says it does not accept that the recording was tampered with.

Spokesperson Caoimhe Kerins said other academic files were removed from the disc before it was handed to the Garda Ombudsman, but the entire file for that day was made available.

A statement by Shell to Sea said any suggestion by a detective garda that he heard a protestor use the word 'rape' is untrue and should be seen as a attempt to undermine the credibility of the women.

The statement added it was also untrue that the second woman had failed to co-operate with the investigation.

'She has in fact invested significant time and energy into preparing a detailed complaint. The deadline for submission of this complaint is September 2011,' it said.


All five gardaí in the car when the comments were made were interviewed by Garda Ombudsman.

The interim report says investigators established within two days that three of them 'took no active part in the contentious part of the conversation, did not engage with the inappropriate comments or make any inappropriate comments themselves.'

The Ombudsman has now decided that while the other two - a garda and a sergeant - remain the subject of a disciplinary inquiry, none of the five will face criminal charges.

The Ombudsman said the level of co-operation it received during its investigation was unsatisfactory - in particular from individuals associated through academic links with the two women.

The report states that one of the two women failed to co-operate with the investigation.


On Friday 8 April this year, the Garda Commissioner apologised for the comments.

Martin Callinan said he was sorry for the offence caused to the 'community we serve' and for the hurt and pain felt in particular by victims of sex crime.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0728/corrib.html

[Mayo4Sam]

MGHU, Ballina does have gas, as does crossmolina

[muppet]

We are a Nation of complete mugs:

http://www.politico.ie/irish-politics/7931-my-oil-and-gas-film.html

Unfortunately an insipid counter argument is seeping into the media via the voices of the oil lobby and Pat Rabbitte. But it is not being properly deconstructed to show it up for the weak and sneaky diversion that it is. On the one hand Davy Stockbrokers is telling investors that the yield from Irish territory is potentially huge. On the other hand the oil lobby line seems to insinuate that there is nothing there and they are doing us all a tremendous favour in prospecting and extracting what is there in the face of massive risk.  In order to back this up they – and our politicians - are clutching at a handful of twisted statistics.

The most glaringly fraudulent of these is the claim that Ireland's strike rate has been dismal since 1970. What they are not telling us is that almost no 3D seismic data existed for the Irish territory in the pre-mobile phone era, which is when the vast majority of these failed exploration wells they are referring to were drilled. From 1995 onwards there was a surge in the amount of highly accurate 3D data collected and an impressive increase in the strike rate followed. If we look at the period from 2000 to date then we see that out of 34 drills 10 are "development wells" a far greater ratio of success than the not 4 in 140 that they would have you believe. Furthermore we have voices from the offshore industry telling us that wells considered "non viable" in the 1980s could now be viable due to increased oil prices and the game changing drilling technology of the last fifteen years which can now reach as far down as 4,000 metres.

[RogerMilla]

Back in the early 70s, Justin Keating imposed terms on Marathon, the company developing the Kinsale field that were based on the Norwegian model. Here, a state-owned company, Statoil, was set up to make maximum use of the state's income from its oil reserves in the North Sea. (The exploration company was Mobil.)
Statoil was to a 50% partner and would bear none of the exploration costs but was to gain full access to mining data.
Norway wanted to become a world leader in deep-sea technology, exploration and production. It's fair to say that Britain settled for a much less favourable deal.
At least, Justin Keating said so.
Keating set up the Irish National Petroleum Corporation, (INPC) based on the Statoil model. This was some achievement given that the '73 oil crisis left the exploration companies with a much stronger hand to play with.
Shortly after this an election was held and Dessie O'Malley took over from Keating. He limited the INPC's remit to sourcing strategic oil supplies. It was no longer involved in drilling, exploration or the development of resources.
He also refused an invitation from Norway to take a block in their North Sea fields as the Norwegians would only deal with a state company and O'Malley was unwilling to use the INPC for this purpose.

this to me was the most important part of the siggins book, we should have gone in with the norwegians and learned how to take the full pound of flesh from the multinationals for our resources,

everything after that is just he said , she said and gutless politicians and angry people getting angrier

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

MGHU, Ballina does have gas, as does crossmolina

O right, well  thats good, its roll out in Castlebar was a mess.

[muppet]

The great give away continues. Despite it being so difficult and unprofitable there was huge interest in our exploration licenses.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1017/breaking17.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

We might as well just give it all to Anglo.

[Mayo4Sam]

Where's the huge interest? None of the majors applied for these licences despite Shell & Exxon already having interest in the area. All because Corrib took 4 times longer than it should & cost 3 times as much.


From the Financial Times


Ireland awards offshore exploration licences
By Jamie Smyth in Dublin
Twelve companies have won licensing options to explore Irish coastal waters for oil and gas. But in a blow to the Irish government's drive to increase offshore exploration, none of the world's oil majors applied.
Repsol, the Spanish oil group, Ireland's Providence Resources and Chrysaor, a private group backed by Barclays Capital, were among the companies granted exploration options on the Porcupine, Slyne and Rockall basins off Ireland's Atlantic coast.
More

ON THIS STORY
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IGas leads Aim-listed rush for onshore oil
Northern Petroleum sets up rig in deer land
Abu Dhabi takes share in Tanzanian field
Premier to buy North Sea explorer EnCore
In an effort to attract entrants, the government offered two-year licensing options rather than frontier licences, which typically require a substantial upfront investment by companies.
The competition attracted 15 applications from small- to midsized groups. This is significantly more than the two applications received in the last Irish exploration licensing round in 2009. However, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, oil majors with existing exploration interests in Atlantic waters off Ireland's west coast, did not submit applications.
Pat Rabbitte, Minister for Energy, told the Financial Times it was possible some major oil groups could join with licence winners at a later stage.
"Ireland needs to see an increase in exploration activity and exploration drilling in particular, if the petroleum potential of our offshore is to be realised," he said.
Mr Rabbitte said it was "a matter of some concern" that a small number of applications were received for the deeper water basins where significant petroleum potential had also been indicated. He said the government would consider regulatory changes to increase interest and would seek the views of the industry in coming months.
Research published by the Irish government on Monday estimates there are "potential, yet to find" reserves of 10bn barrels of oil equivalent off the Irish coast. But exploration interest remained very low with just 14 wells drilled since 2000.
The Irish Offshore Operators' Association said a low success rate for drilling to date, a harsh operating environment in the Atlantic and extreme delays in bringing the Corrib gas field into production were to blame.
The Corrib gas field, which was discovered in 1996, lies 83 kilometres off Ireland's west coast and is estimated to have one trillion cubic feet of gas. The project, which is being developed by Shell, Statoil and Vermilion Energy, has faced lengthy planning delays and sustained local protests. The field is expected to cost €2.5bn ($3.4bn) to develop – more than three times the original estimate of €800m.
John O'Sullivan, technical director with Providence Resources, said he felt a lot of companies would hold off investing in Ireland until Corrib was in production.
"We've definitely seen a Corrib ripple effect where we have seen potential JV partners come to us and being interested in doing business in Ireland. They go through the technical assessment, it gets to their main board and then someone who has worked at Shell or read about Corrib says they're not going to touch Ireland," he said.
Mr Rabbitte added the delays at Corrib had been damaging for Ireland.
"You can bring a well ashore in about four years in Norway. By the time we have eventually gone through all the hoops here, it will be 16 or 17 years. I can't pretend that has been a positive experience for Ireland," he said.
The 12 companies awarded licensing options are: Serica Energy, Providence Resources, Chrysaor E&P Ireland, Sosina Exploration, Bluestack Energy, Petrel Resources, Antrim Energy, Europa Oil & Gas, Two Seas Oil & Gas, Repsol Exploration, First Oil Expro and San Leon Energy.
Two applicants missed the deadline for the competition and were disqualified.



http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/02ee470a-f8d3-11e0-a5f7-00144feab49a.html#axzz1bAKemVCb

[muppet]

The poor poor oil companies.

Tell me did Shell or Exxon or any of the major find the Corrib basin?

An independent exploration company found it. That company was bought by Shell once it had found the goods. Still, as Bertie Ahern said, fooling some of the people all of the time works.