Once Upon a Time in the West [Kindle Edition]

The issue of the Corrib Gas project in the west of Ireland deals with the conflict between big corporations and government on the one side and the common people on the other side. As such it is worth the attention of us all, wherever we may live. In my opinion this book is important in that it provides us with knowledge on how this controversy has developed throughout the past 10 years. The issue is not whether the book has a bias one way or the other, (and I'm not sure that it has). The issue is that it provides us with information; it educates us. We are not slaves to adopting the opinions of all the protagonists that it recounts. We can make our own minds up. We can read further. The important thing is that it puts the subject in front of us. It is impossible to read this book without coming away with serious misgivings as to how the Corrib gas field project has been handled. For that reason I recommend the book highly.

There are at least 3 interest groups in the local population in the Erris peninsula, where the gas field pipeline and refinery is located.

1> Those who support it unreservedly.
2> Those who support it but who have serious reservations about the safety of the project as currently planned and who want those reservations addressed.
3> Those who oppose it under any circumstances whatsoever.

The strategy of both the corporate interests involved, and government, has been to paint all protesters to this project with the ideological intransigence that is associated with group 3 above - the "Never, Never" group. This has succeeded in seriously damaging the way that the reasonable and legitimate concerns of group 2 above has been perceived by the wider population throughout the country.

There is another issue. Ireland has no income participation whatsoever in the harvesting of the gas from the Corrib field.

This may seem unbelievable, so let me restate it. The Irish state will earn no royalty on gas extracted from the Corrib gas field. Zero.

In 1987 the Fianna Fail Minister for Energy abolished all royalties on petroleum and natural gas extraction and removed the state's right to participation. Dick Spring, labour party former Minister for Energy (1983-1987), described this move as "an act of economic treason". The justification given for this decision was to encourage exploration in Irish waters. But, zero participation...???

So, should the people of Erris worry about gas pipeline safety? Should they rely on the reassurance of a multi-national Oil Corporation that there is absolutely nothing to worry about? If you Google "natural gas pipeline accidents" you will find a disturbingly long list of pipeline accidents throughout the world, many resulting in multiple deaths to local residents. I think the Group 2 protestors above have a very valid case. This book puts that case in front of us and is to be commended for so doing.

Excellent book to get a full review of the gas controversy, I wish everybody in Ireland would read it !

Siggins shows her news paper roots right from the start. She relates the who, what, where and when of the most compelling parts of the Corrib gas saga. Unfortunately, as most news papers do these days, she fails to explain why any of these events are important to the reader. In fact, each of the events is presented with equal weight. The gas developer's lack of attendance at a meeting of an obscure society that honors an executed Nigerian activist is presented with the same lack of context as the imprisonment of five local Irish "farmers" (the Rossport Five). Why should we care about the Nigerian? What exactly did the farmers do wrong? In reality, the Nigerian has little bearing on Corrib, and the farmers were jailed for interfering with the lawful development of the gas project, but you could not tell that by reading this book.

I also could not help noticing that Siggins had much greater access to the protesters than she had to the developers. She consistently identifies protesters and politicians by their full names and titles while the "bad guys" are often referred to as "a Shell official". She has great insight into the motivation of the protesters, with whom she spoke regularly, but the developer's motives must be inferred from public statements, and leaked memos. This only adds to the imbalanced flavor of the book.

The history of Corrib had to be written, and now we have this work as the first chapter. Despite the its partisan nature, I would recommend anyone working on energy or industry or in government in Ireland or anywhere in Europe to hold their nose and read this book, and stay tuned as the story continues to unfold.