THE impact on the environment of importing fracked gas into the Shannon Estuary will be worse over a 20-year period than importing coal to generate electricity in Moneypoint, a local environmentalist has claimed.

Shannon LNG has outlined its plans to seeking planning permission from An Bord Pleanála to build a €650 million liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal between Ballylongford and Tarbert in North Kerry.

An LNG terminal is a facility for regasifying liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped in by an LNG tanker from production zones.

Johnny McElligott, Tarbert of Safety Before LNG, has been opposing the proposed gas terminal for years.

In his address to the rally, Mr McElligott alleged that importing fracked gas from the United States of America into the Shannon Estuary will have a 44% higher carbon equivalent footprint over
a 20-year period than importing coal from Colombia to burn in Moneypoint.

“We are going to close Moneypoint because it looks good, but we are going to replace it with something worse – a fracked gas terminal in the Shannon Estuary. This terminal can’t be allowed to go ahead. We tried to get into the Climate Bill an idea of looking at the full life cycle emissions of big energy choices we make, but that got vetoed at every stage of the bill.”

“At the moment we are only looking at our own Carbon budget. That is not good enough. There are plans for eight data centres on the Tarbert landbank.

“Fracked gas from America will be fuelling American-owned data centres. It will look very good on paper because we are offshoring the emissions up stream.”

“We will be the best little country in the world to do business because we will be producing no emissions.”

He said the government is consistently placing the responsibility of tackling climate change on Irish people without tackling large fossil fuel companies who were the main polluters.

He claimed if this LNG terminal is built, it will sterilise the mouth of the Shannon Estuary, and stressed it is important to stop this project so the message is clear that Ireland will not be used to facilitate American fracked gas.

Outlining the importance of reducing methane to tackle Climate Change, he warned a huge percentage of man-made methane was coming from fracking.

He said 700 organisations worldwide signed up to a petition for a worldwide ban on fracking that would be presented as a motion to the United Nations Assembly, but this wasn’t backed by the Irish government who felt it wouldn’t get the necessary support.

He claimed the Irish government was putting trade over climate as it didn’t want to upset the government of the United States of America.