In 2001 Enterprise Energy Ireland Ltd, acting for the oil companies Enterprise Oil, Statoil and Marathon, submitted plans to situate a gas refinery in Ballinaboy, Co. Mayo, to process gas from the Corrib field which had been discovered some 80 km off the west coast. The local radio station, Mid-West, sponsored a small group from Co. Mayo to spend 3 days in the Shetland Islands to learn how the Shetland Council had responded to the discovery of North Sea Oil off their shores in the early 70’s and the proposal to build one of the biggest oil refineries in Europe on their doorstep.
Local radio journalist Liamy McNally, Ian McAndrew of the Gaeltacht Authority and local schoolteacher Micheal Ó Seighin travelled to the Shetland Islands to meet with the Islands Council, fishermen and local people, to see how this small rural community had dealt with the challenge presented by the arrival of the Oil Industry in their community. Shay Fenelly, photographer, documented the visit for the Irish Times and showed almost prophetically how the tragic unravelling of the Corrib saga could have been avoided. The following is based on his article 9 years ago.
The Shetlands, home to 23,000 people, is an archipelago of over 100 islands, spread over 500 square miles between Scotland and Norway. In the 1970’s it was an economically deprived area with little industry and poor infrastructure. At first the islanders were apprehensive about the arrival of Oil to the island and the disruption it would cause to their way of life and environment. Nobody on the island had any experience of dealing with such a huge industrial project, and there was a real fear that the islanders would be overwhelmed and outsmarted by the large multinational oil companies. It appeared that this was exactly what the oil companies were thinking, simply because it usually worked!
What the oil companies did not count on was that some very clever people within the Shetlad Council had been doing their homework, examining the approaches taken in similar circumstances, and the results. Ian Clarke, who had worked his way up from a clerk to head of the council began to negotiate with the oil companies. At first the oil companies, as expected, took a very arrogant approach to the Shetlanders, presuming that they would not put up much resistance and be content with a few handouts. However, they, especially Shell, miscalculated Clark: “We were called down to a meeting in Shell Centre and they told us that they had done all their calculations, and, on the basis of what we were demanding, they couldn’t afford to come to Shetland and that they were going to the mainland of Scotland. My response to that was to say to them that it was a very happy day. I wanted to begin by congratulating them on their technical expertise that they could take the gas and the crude to the mainland of Scotland . Secondly, since our previous discussions had seldom been happy ones, when we went back to Shetland and gave them this news, we would be heroes indeed. And we got up and walked towards the door. And physically we were put back in our chairs and told ‘We’ve got to come to Shetland.’ So that was another wee piece of pressure which really didn’t quite work for them. And it was at that stage we realised we really had won the battle.” The Shetland council moved quickly and the Zetland County Council Act 1974 was passed in Parliament giving the council considerable control in and around the islands. A policy of safeguarding the communities basic interests was put in place to protect the potential disruption to people and environment. One of the most significant moves by the Council was to take ownership of the land upon which the terminal would be built. This gave the council considerable control over the massive oil terminal over the course of its operation. The council also took on multiple roles as proprietor of the loading jetties, port authority for the tanker harbour, planning authority, environmental regulator, trustee for local oil revenues and supplier of infrastructure and services.
From the start, Ian Clarke negotiated the Shetlands Islands Council as a formal partner in the industry and for every barrel of oil landed on the island, they would get a tiny share, but considering the massive amount of oil being landed, it resulted in quite a massive windfall for the Islands. These monies, along with other duties on the oil companies, were set up in charitable trusts which were used ‘for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Shetland Islands’. By 2000, one of these trusts had a reserve fund of £230 million. Indeed the oil revenue has transformed the social and economic infrastructure of the area, while making sure that environmental protection is a top priority. As fishing was the main industry in the 1970’s, many of the fishermen had deep misgivings about the threat that the oil industry posed to their livelihood. A rigorous system of environmental monitoring was put in place by the council and funded by the oil companies, with local fishermen highly represented on the body. This body commissions universities and institutions to conduct independent baseline studies and surveys, and ensures that the marine environment is kept as pristine as the day the oil companies came knocking. The advice of a local fisherman to the visitors from north Mayo was ‘to keep the environmental monitoring uncontaminated by money’. Any compensation paid must not be to individuals but be paid into the fishermen’s ‘reserve fund’, and ended on a prophetic note of warning ‘When you are dealing with compensation from oil companies, you must all hang together or you will hang separately’. 
On returning home, Liamy McNally offered to present Mayo county council with all the information and advice they had gathered from the Shetlands experience. Unfortunately Mayo County Council did not want to know, and rejected Liamy’s offer. When the oil companies approaced the council, the councillors were very polite and accommodating to the oil company representatives and dared not demand, or even ask for, any concessions from the oil men. The site for the refinery was sold by the state without any public consultation, Mayo county council signed off on planning permission without any framework for local participation and benefit from the development, and there was no impediment on the developer to set aside any portion of revenues from the gas for the local community to improve its neglected social and economic infrastructure.
9 years on, following jailings, conflict, division, 1.5 billion capital spending on project and 20 million of taxpayers money on police overtime for Shell, and despite a ‘community grants’ programme and large compensation packages to many of the fishermen by Shell, the Corrib Gas project is bogged down even deeper now with no prospect of gas flowing any time soon – why? Maybe if Mayo County Council had listened to those who had went to the effort of learning from the experience of the Shetlanders, the great opportunities which the gas could have brought may not have been lost, but then again, Mayo County Council knew best.
