Ireland's oil and gas industry: hot air, watery wells, and empty rhetoric

July-August 2018

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FTER A long hiatus, last summer Providence Resources drilled for oil

in the Porcupine Basin off the South West coast of Cork and Kerry.

Signiﬁcant public relations work was done to claim that 5bn barrels

of oil would be found. On 4 August 2017, not only was nothing found

but a watery well, but shares in Providence Resources fell 46%. In

Irish folklore, the Porcupine Basin is believed to be the site of Hy-Brazil – for some

it is known as Tír na nÓg. A mythology matched only by the fossil-fuel industry’s

own press on the likelihood of it ﬁnding oil in the area.

Indeed the failure of this particular watery well is no surprise: failure is a fun-

damental feature of every fossil-fuel venture off the Irish coast.

by Sinéad Mercier

Ireland's oil and

gas industry:

hot air, watery

wells, and

empty rhetoric

ENVIRONMENT

A new Act will prohibit new licences for

Ireland’s offshore oil and gas industry

Providence Resources' Barry Roe0 well: the ﬁelds with the most

potential have already been given out on generous terms for periods

up to 2030 – cutting it close to the zero-carbon 2050 scenarios

demanded by climate agreements. Pic: Finbarr O'Rourke/RollingNews.ie

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July-August 2018

Ireland – no country for oil barons

Out of around 160 wells drilled since 1962, only two commercial discover-

ies have been found. This is a record low that has existed in a country with

the second most attractive ﬁscal terms in the world and a governing Depar t-

ment of “Climate Action and Environment” that has never once conducted

an Environmental Impact Assessment of industry activities offshore.

Gas has been found off Kinsale in 1971, and Corrib in 1996, but they are

no example to follow. Not only was there a 25-year gap between discover-

ies, but they resulted in reputational damage to the industry. Corrib in

particular led to social and political upheaval. Corruption and a lack of con-

cern for public or environmental safety dogged the project – ﬁnally leaving

Shell with losses of 12.5bn.

The ﬁelds with the most potential have already been given out, and on

extremely generous terms. Many licence periods will go as far as 2028 or

2030 – cutting it close to the zero-carbon 2050 scenarios demanded by EU

and UN climate agreements. Some accounts state that under the 2011 Licenc-

ing Round, companies can hold licences for 47 years – up until the year

2058.

The only oily thing in the Irish Atlantic is its abundance of ﬁsh. The number

one reason why fossil fuel companies operating in Ireland can’t secure a

business partner is because there is simply nothing there. According to the

2012 Oireachtas Committee Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration Report – which

heard extensively from the Irish Offshore Operators Association (IOOA) -

Ireland has a mere 4.8% overall success rate for a commercial ﬁnd. The

IOOA, Providence Resources and PwC have all admitted – in many repre-

sentations to Oireachtas Committees and the public – that there is only a

1 in 32 chance of ﬁnding anything commercial. Compared to a 1 in 7 chance

in Norway and 1 in 6 for the UK. Even the Government’s own 2012 Harness-

ing Our Ocean Wealth policy lists offshore oil and gas as having not only

the lowest growth potential of any marine industry, but a minus growth of

-4.8%.

Climate Change

Ireland's seas are some of the most inhospitable in Europe, perfect for

reclusive Skellig monks, but with major storms and difﬁcult geology. No

present fossil fuel technology can cope with such a testing environment.

The technology is unlikely to ever be developed due to climate change

targets.

The majority of the world’s countries (193 to be exact) agree with 97%

of scientists that we need to keep global temperatures below a 1.5C or 2C

degree rise to avoid catastrophic climate change. In practice, this is widely

known to mean that 75 to 80% of the known fossil fuels have to stay in

the ground. Ireland’s fossil fuel resources are unknown, and therefore

unusable.

The millions that it costs to set up new fossil fuel infrastructure represent

what the Bank of England calls “stranded assets”. In the past ﬁve years

investment funds, public institutions and individuals have divested around

US$6.15 trillion (15.2 trillion) of fossil-fuel assets and the Irish Government

itself is fast-tracking Trócaire and Thomas Pringle's Fossil Fuel Divestment

Bill to divest the state pension fund from fossil fuels. Any investment in

further fossil-fuel infrastructure, instead of renewables, locks in reliance on

a ﬂailing industry.

ENVIRONMENT

Ireland’s seas suffer storms and difﬁcult

geology. No fossil-fuel technology can cope nor

will it ever be developed because of existing

climate-change targets

July-August 2018

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Energy Security

A genuine concern stated by Government is the need for Ireland to have

its own resources for reasons of energy security. However, this is naïve.

Fossil-fuel extraction is a privatised industr y and any fuel found in Irish

seas will go to the highest bidder, not to the Irish people. Furthermore,

with the prospect of much of the fuel being immediately shipped over-

seas with the development of new technologies such as Liquiﬁed Natural

Gas (LNG), it is likely our resources will boost the security of supply of

other countries more than our own. Ireland has no oil reﬁneries and

planned drill sites such as the Newgrange prospect are located 260 km

off the south-west coast of Ireland. Why would companies risk another

Corrib scandal by bringing anything ashore?

Most of our gas already comes from friendly neighbours in Scotland

and Norway, not Russia, and we have more than enough to last us to

the extent demanded by climate targets.

There is not even a wealth of taxes to be gained from the industry.

Since 2013, new licences are subject to a 25% corporation tax on proﬁts

which can be written off against costs. The tax take in sub-Saharan

Africa ranges from 44% to 85%. Once a ﬁeld starts producing it will be

subject to a Petroleum Production Tax that ranges from 5-55% depend-

ing on the ﬁeld’s commerciality. This again can be written off against

costs and corporation tax payments.

However, many oil and gas licences like the Newgrange prospect in

the ecologically sensitive Porcupine Basin – and the Kish Basin near the

Dun Laoghaire Forty Foot – were given out before 2013 and beneﬁt from

a historic no-tax regime set up to encourage investment in exploration.

As a result, if there is an unlikely success, the millions of euro that are

being poured into exploration by Providence Resources and others will

undermine any Government tax bill.

Whatever paltry taxes remain have also been undermined by Govern-

ment spending to facilitate the oil and gas industry. One egregious

example is the Regional Seismic Survey which was originally a “jointly

funded” project between the Department of Climate Action and ENI Ire-

land (a fossil fuel company currently embroiled in a Nigerian human

rights scandal – few surprises there). Government and industry were to

share the 120 million cost of mapping the sea-ﬂoor with dangerous seis

mic testing. In the end, the industry gave only 13.99million to the project

– though it awarded the subservient Department a 2015 Maritime Indus-

try Award for the privilege of depleting our plankton and ﬁsh stocks.

Environmental Damage

No doubt all these arguments of ‘nothing there’ served the industr y well

when seeking a non-existent tax rate and countering public demands

that the Irish State should own its own energy resources. An argument

made in Oireachtas hearings and newspaper articles by the IOOA. But

with ever increasing knowledge of the damage being done, the policy

looks like expensive posturing by pin-striped suits playing JR in Dallas.

One indefensible example of this feckless macho approach to our

environment is the seismic testing that occurs in Irish waters every

summer.

To map the seabed for fossil fuel deposits, sonic cannons, also known

as seismic airguns, are towed behind boats creating dynamite-like blasts

— repeated every ten seconds, 24 hours a day, for weeks and months

at a time. At acoustic levels 100,000 times more intense than a jet

engine.

As highlighted by the Irish documentaries

Ireland’s Deep Atlantic

and

Atlantic the Film

, seismic testing blasts are essentially “waves of death”

that cause disorientation and internal bleeding in cetaceans for distances

of up to 100 miles. Causing unknown damage to the 24 species of

whales, dolphins (including Fungie) and porpoises that bless Ireland’s

seas with their presence.

New evidence from

Nature Journal

in 2017 shows that a single blast

kills 100% of zooplankton larvae – the basis of the marine ecosystem

– and 64% of adult krill for at least 0.7 miles. It destroys fundamental

aspects of the ocean’s fabric. This is merely the most recent of many

peer-reviewed scientiﬁc studies showing the extensive ef fects of seismic

testing on all levels of the ocean food-chain. As long as ten years ago,

in 2007, the International Whaling Commission found that 250 male ﬁn

whales appeared to stop “singing” for up to several months during seis-

mic testing.

The full damage being done is as yet unknown – the Irish Whale and

Dolphin Group reported 2017 as the worst year on record for beach

strandings with a 30% rise in dolphin deaths. Fewer ﬁn and blue whales

have also been recorded in the Porcupine Basin – potentially a key

mating ground - since seismic testing began there in 2013.

Faced with a Department in thrall to fossil fuel industry executives, it

is ordinar y Irish ﬁshing communities in Kerr y and Galway that are having

to take on the role of watchdog as their ﬁsh stocks rapidly deplete. They

are calling for the Petroleum Affairs Division (PAD) to place a morato-

rium on seismic testing until an EIA is conducted that takes into account

the cumulative effect of decades of seismic testing on the Irish ocean.

Despite powers granted to do so in 2013, the PAD has never once

required an Environmental Impact Assessment or a Stage 2 Appropriate

Assessment to assess the oft-reported damage.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service has not even bothered to

update its guidelines to incorporate new information on plankton,

though seismic testing conducted in Ireland is likely to be the most dan-

gerous in the world.

No new licences

Why would Government want to allow a completely unproductive indus-

try drill along our Wild Atlantic Way? Even if only tiny amounts of oil are

found, these wells produce toxic chemicals like benzene, arsenic, and

radioactive pollutants, and toxic metals like mercury and lead that may

accumulate in our seafood supply.

The answer is simple, lobbying. In the main this lobbying is by former

Department ofﬁcials that take up roles in private industry once they

leave the Department. A pathway char ted in detail by Dr Amanda Slevin

from Queens University Belfast in her book Gas, Oil and the Irish State.

This lobbying is made all the more effective by the general global shift

towards selling off natural resources to private interests – termed

‘extractivism’ by Naomi Klein.

Fossil fuel lobbyists are obsessed with building an image of their

industry as eternally youthful – a mythical Tír na nÓg that will survive

against all the evidence that their industry is dangerous, damaging and

defunct. The worst irony is that today’s youth will suffer most from the

short-sighted selﬁshness of their endeavours. We are now moving to

stop this with the Climate Emergency Bill from Brid Smith which will ban

all new oil and gas licences. Like Costa Rica and New Zealand let us

move forward to a better, safer world.

Sinéad Mercier is a Green Par ty researcher and member of Not Here, Not

Anywhere

To map the seabed for fossil-fuel deposits, sonic

seismic-testing blasts cause disorientation and

internal bleeding 100 miles to 24 species of

whales and dolphins