Campaigners vow to resist ‘reckless and unnecessary’ LNG import terminal in Clare

The State’s planned emergency gas reserve in Cahiracon, Co Clare represents a “reckless and unnecessary shift towards long-term fossil gas infrastructure” according to a coalition of campaign groups that has vowed to resist the plan.

The Stop Shannon LNG coalition says Gas Networks Ireland’s so-called ‘Strategic Gas Emergency Reserve’ (SGER) on the Shannon Estuary would effectively be a fracked gas import terminal, and is in direct conflict with Ireland’s climate obligations and the safety of communities in Ireland and the United States. The coalition also condemned the short notice for last Thursday’s public consultation event, with the community given less than 24 hours’ notice.

It has previously been announced that a floating LNG terminal would require a minimum of six refills per year, displacing 13% of current Irish gas demand.  Research by US scientist Prof. Robert Howarth, including his 2024 paper “The Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Exported from the United States”, shows that LNG from the US carries an exceptionally high global warming potential. According to the coalition’s calculations based on Howarth’s work, simply swapping the current gas supply for imported US LNG would drive an additional 1.34 million tonnes of global life-cycle emissions — even under the “minimal use” scenario presented by GNI. This alone would be comparable to 5% of Ireland’s territorial emissions.

Commenting on the GNI announcement, Cllr Eddie Mitchell of Love Leitrim said: “This move threatens to entrench Ireland’s reliance on imported fracked LNG from the United States, locking in high greenhouse-gas emissions and undermining our climate commitments. It’s the equivalent to planting an emissions bomb for Ireland in the Shannon Estuary. Gas Networks Ireland is signalling that the terminal will supply whatever gas demand exists in the future, for as long as it’s needed, creating an entry point for fracked LNG in Ireland, and showing that  the Government is prepared to walk away from its responsibilities to mitigate climate change.”

Mitchell also highlighted the scale of emissions associated with individual LNG shipments and the operating of a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU):

“The life-cycle emissions of one shipment of US fracked gas are roughly half a million tonnes of CO₂e (GWP100). This is almost double the emissions from an equivalent amount of pipeline gas imported through the Moffat interconnector. Just replacing a single cargo of Moffat pipeline gas with US LNG adds 223,000 tonnes of unnecessary emissions. LNG cannot be stored long-term due to volatility, so the gas would be pumped into the grid within two months, requiring at least six shipments annually. That minimum usage alone would produce 2.92 million tonnes CO₂e (GWP100). Every two months this gas would displace cleaner pipeline gas without adding any extra energy supply, forcing 1.34 million tonnes of avoidable emissions into the atmosphere.”

Mitchell concluded: “Even the bare-minimum operation of this terminal represents 2% of our annual territorial emissions — before any additional usage to ‘back up renewables,’ which GNI has already signalled. This is an unnecessary emissions bomb, imposed without community consent, transparency, or climate justification.”

Emmanuela Ferrari of Futureproof Clare stated:

“In Gas Networks Ireland’s documents on the proposed terminal, important information parts such as greenhouse gas emissions, weaknesses, safety implications, threats, costs and environmental implications for the Shannon Estuary were redacted.  The cost of building and running the facility is predicted at €900 million, which will be recouped through tariffs on customers’ energy bills. When questioned at the recent public consultation about the viability of procuring LNG non-commercially, a gas networks Ireland official said they’d have to “tag on” to a commercial facility. 

Tom Spillane, fourth year planning student at TU Dublin says:

‘’I am incredibly concerned about this project. The government are highly motivated to fast-track Strategic Infrastructural Projects` such as this, but at what cost? Yes, we have an energy crisis, but we also have a consumption crisis. Data centres in Ireland already account for at least 22% of energy usage from our national grid, and I would be quite concerned about the level of regulation and transparency of the end user of the stored LNG.’’

Eoghan Harris of Future Generations Kerry stated:

“The people of Kerry and Clare will resist the government’s designs and their treachery. We will fight for our economic sovereignty, the protection of our environment and that of those affected by fracking. Kildysart, just like the Tarbert/Ballylongford landbank in Kerry, is on the Clare shale basin, which was targeted for fracking in 2011 to 2017.” 

“On the one hand, the determination of the government to abandon its climate commitments and worsen the climate catastrophe for everyone. On the other hand, while we urgently need to switch to renewables, this process needs to be just. This is not the case if the people of Kerry and Clare, the ecosystem in the area, the environmental and social damage at the source of fracking and LNG extraction, and the fact that this gas serves to increase the profits of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta. It begs the question of who is really making policy here? Former US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told then Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe recently that the Irish Government should offer to buy more liquified natural gas from America and increase its defence spending in its negotiations with the Trump administration."

ENDS

For more details see: www.stopshannonlng.ie

The Stop Shannon LNG coalition is a group of environmental groups formed to fight the planned construction of a fracked gas import terminal in Ireland

Links:

LNG Emissions Calculator – StopShannonLNG