‘Uninformation’ and the Kildysart terminal

Check out this opinion piece published by FPC member Sinéad Sheehan in the Clare Champion, December 22.

'Uninformation' and the Kildysart Terminal

I recently attended an information evening hosted by Gas Networks Ireland (GNI) in Kildysart which took place with just 24 hours notice to the community.

The reason cited by TD Timmy Dooley (FF) on RTE Radio 1 news for such a short notification on this substantial proposal was to avoid misinformation and disinformation.

I argue here, that the GNI evening in Kildysart and the information about the Clare Shannon Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal on the GNI website is an example of “uninformation”, where anybody who reads or engages only with the information provided by GNI, will be left completely uninformed. 

Since the early naughties, US multinational company, New Fortress Energy, has been knocking on, or some might say, breaking down, doors in Kerry to build the Shannon LNG terminal in Ballylongford. 

As a member of environmental campaign group Futureproof Clare, I have been campaigning for several years in solidarity with our southerly neighbours in Kerry against the LNG terminal on the basis of the detrimental impacts to the climate, environment and public health. 

For many people who have campaigned for years against LNG in Kerry, finding out about a new LNG proposal in Clare was quite a shock. 

I wanted to go to Kildysart to get a feel for what the locals were thinking but also to get a feel for what the project would be about.

On entry to Kildysart Community Centre, I was immediately approached by a Gas Networks Ireland member of staff, as was every punter or politician who walked in the door. 

I would estimate there were more than a dozen friendly GNI faces in the small town hall ready to engage with attendees and reassure us that the floating LNG terminal, or as they called it, a Strategic Gas Energy Reserve (SGER) would be safe, “critical” and that there would be no negative effects whatsoever to the local community or otherwise. 

There was an abundance of shiny posters and glossy leaflets and if I didn’t know any better, and I had €900 million to spare in my back pocket, I nearly would have gone out and bought a floating LNG storage unit myself, as the GNI PR campaign was so convincing. 

The leaflet available to take away from the evening contained the title: “Your community is involved in a project of national importance” with the subtitle “Here is what you need to know”. 

This reminded me of an Uncle Sam advertisement that successfully coerced young men to join the military without really preparing them for all they would need to endure in face of war, destruction and inhumanity. 

The community need to know a lot more than the information that was in that one-page leaflet in order to make an informed decision about whether this is the correct project for the Clare Shannon Estuary area.

Gas, by whatever name they want to give it, “natural” or otherwise, is a fossil fuel and LNG is considered by experts to be 33% more potent in terms of climate and environmental impacts compared to burning coal. 

Although the use of gas has lower carbon emissions, it has much higher methane emissions, and methane is a greenhouse gas that traps more heat than carbon. 

Experts and environmental advocates believe that building new fossil fuel infrastructure, such as the proposed LNG terminal in Kildysart, will contribute to accelerating climate change and this will have extremely negative implications for life on earth as we know it. 

The gas that would be imported to Clare Shannon LNG would be highly likely to be from fracked sources in the US. 

Ireland banned fracking in 2016 because it is associated with adverse public health outcomes. 

Fracking is linked to cancer, birth defects, respiratory illness and other illnesses. Ireland does not currently import fracked gas and a fracked gas terminal in Kildysart could potentially threaten the Irish ban on fracking. 

If we were to start importing fracked gas, it would almost certainly make us complicit in the negative impacts of fracking on our neighbours in the US who have struggled with the fracking industry in their communities for decades. 

However, detailed information about the public health impacts of fracked gas at sites of fracking, during transportation and at the point of use was not on display that evening in Kildysart nor is it on GNI’s website. 

The lack of information about the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change, as well as information about fracking or fracked gas is one example of uninformation in relation to the Clare Shannon LNG project.

Another piece of “uninformation” is around what GNI frequently refer to as a Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve (SGER). 

This is simply another name for a LNG terminal. This terminal would take the form of a Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU), a ship containing gas in an unstable liquid state. 

In order to be used, the liquid would need to be transformed back into gas, a process called regasification. 

There is a certain amount of regasification necessary in order to keep the storage viable – in other words, the gas cannot simply just sit there in a tanker in the Shannon Estuary and be used only in an emergency. 

If the LNG terminal is built the gas could be used at any time.

One reason they are now calling it a SGER is because in 2023, former Green Party Minister Eamon Ryan brought in an Energy Security policy that set out under Action 17 that a SGER would be built under accelerated implementation. 

This terminology has been used since by the successive government departments, GNI and energy regulators. From here on, I will just refer to the SGER/FSRU as an LNG terminal to avoid confusion.

I’m sure many people will have heard the term “energy security” used in several media outlets.
GNI and the government refer to two different and opposing narratives around this term. 

The first is that the LNG terminal would provide several month’s supply of energy in the event of a “major disruption”. 

The imagined disruption refers to two underground interconnectors from Britain that pipe gas from the North Sea to Ireland. 

The likelihood of failure is minimal, as these interconnectors are both underwater and underground. The GNI website mentions a potential disruption to hospitals, but hospitals have their own backup generators, and rightly so. 

If the very unlikely scenario of a failure of gas supply from Scotland to Ireland were to happen, Ireland already has some back up in the form of Corrib gas off the Mayo coast as well as our growing renewable energy infrastructure. 

The need for energy security is a frequent narrative used by the fossil fuel industry to justify initiating new fossil few infrastructure, but I would suggest seriously questioning this narrative. 

The second justification for building a floating LNG terminal near Kildysart given by GNI and the government, also from Eamon Ryan’s pocket phrasebook, is for “when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine”. 

With Ireland’s weather as changeable and unpredictable as our national football teams’ results, I can’t see how we need to sound the sirens when we have a still, cloudy day on the emerald isle. 

It’s hardly appropriate to describe the LNG as an emergency reserve then, if GNI are saying that the gas would be relied upon in certain kinds of Irish weather?

Although not mentioned on the GNI website, there might just be another reason for the accelerated implementation of a floating LNG terminal in the Shannon Estuary and that is the increasing and apparently insatiable appetite for gas from the data centre industry. 

CSO statistics demonstrate that while household energy consumption is decreasing, data centre energy use accounts for as much as 22% of all energy used in Ireland and this is expected to rise, especially if the Big Tech industry can find a way to get more gas into the country. 

The proposal to host a LNG terminal in the Shannon Estuary, as previously mentioned, is not new. 

However, the suggestion that a state-led terminal would be different than a commercial terminal is a fairly dodgy distinction that might appear to make the idea of importing fracked gas from the US more palatable. 

State-led means what exactly? Would the state buy the floating LNG storage ship? 

Not likely – as GNI say that the ship will sail off at some point, which would mean leasing it from a commercial supplier. 

It is much more plausible that although the terminal may be state-led by name, it would have to be commercial in nature, owned and operated by a foreign multi-national corporation. 

This missing piece of information also calls into question the idea that the LNG terminal would supposedly support the local economy by providing much-needed jobs.

However, it is not clear whether the fossil fuel industry would bring in its own specialised workers from abroad, which is what has happened in other places that have hosted LNG. 

Lastly, I want to highlight uninformation about the Cahiracon LNG in relation to safety hazards. 

I asked the nice people from GNI at the community centre whether or not they felt that LNG was safe. I was reassured that it would be entirely safe. 

I asked if there had ever been any explosions or incidents in relation to LNG in other countries. I was told no, because the gas industry is highly regulated, but if I knew of any to let them know. 

I was fairly shocked at the time about how uninformed the GNI worker was about previous incidents related to LNG and I wondered if he didn’t know the dangers, how could they mitigate or protect against them. 

LNG has indeed been linked to previous explosions with many impacted homes and businesses. 

There was an incident in 2022 in an LNG export terminal in Florida; in Washington in 2014; Skikda, Algeria in 2004; and the 1944 Cleveland disaster. 

Together these incidents have resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. The lack of information about safety hazards in relation to LNG on the GNI website and at the meeting is surely more worrying because it is left out of the information provided.

The terms of the engagement of the local and wider community about the proposal to host a LNG terminal in Cahiracon needs to be considered. 

The Kildysart meeting in late November took place entirely on GNI’s terms, without any real opportunity for a constructive debate or a public Q & A session. 

The leaflets themselves describe the project as one of national importance, suggesting that a national dialogue on the pros and the cons of the proposal is needed. 

The project will affect whether or not Ireland meets its climate obligations and therefore whether or not the country will have to pay billions of euros in fines, from the Irish taxpayer’s pocket. 

The proposed LNG terminal is extremely expensive to build and operate, and the public needs to be given the opportunity to question who will really benefit as well as what the potential negative consequences will be. 

Since the public announcement of the Clare LNG proposal, the GNI and government PR campaign might give both the informed and the uninformed member of the public the impression that this project will be pushed through come hell or highwater. 

Indeed, living climate hell and highwater are becoming even more a likely even GNI and the government get their way in building a LNG terminal in Clare.