Frank Fahey sees Shell on the sea shore

[tonic]

Logic will do. In all my time on P.ie you have, under your changing idents, in your posts that I have read, a pretty much 100% record of supporting whatever the government line is at any given time, on any given subject, in a rather weary, opposing-views-are-so-silly tone.

This is why so many posters refer to your posts rather jeeringly. You are very, very obviously not a fool, and no imaginable government could get such unremitting support at every turn from any intelligent individual, however politically supportive they might be of the party in power. Therefore quite a few longtime posters clearly believe your expressed sentiments do not reflect an honest expression of your actual individual opinions, but stem rather from a decision to support government choices per se.

In other words, having read your posts under various noms de plume for a long time, I tend to view them as essentially the work of a propagandist with a very definte agenda rather than an expression of your individual opinion.

If this were not the case, tonic, I would most certainly not jeer at you as I sometimes do: I jeer at the persona you've adopted, not at you personally, because personae do not have a third dimension that individuals do, and it is that third dimension that is hurtable. If I thought for a moment my jeers were offending anything more personal than your authorial amour propre as creator of the cartoonish "HAL" or "tonic" or "TonyS" (the last is before my time, but you are popularly identified with him/her and the HAL/tonic voice is certainly interchangeable so I presume the TonyS one was too) I would immediately refrain.

You may well say this is all too airy-fairy for your notice but I think you know exactly what I mean.

No, I can honestly say I don't know what you mean. I would have to admit I don't really understand people like you at all. You don't have opinions, what you have is a belief system, not based on the facts or known truth of any issue, but based solely on your own preconceptions.

The reason you "jeer", as you describe it, at my posts, is because my posts challenge your beliefs with those facts you have no time for and as your beliefs have a very shaky foundation, you don't like that, you really don't like that at all.

Time I think for you to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself some questions. You never know, you may even have the honesty to come up with the right answers.

[Malbekh]

And how many finds did this result in?

In fairness goosebump, I did qualify this in my original post by saying:

In fairness to Ahern and Burke, the fact is that we are not a resource rich country, and therefore companies need to be given as many incentives as possible. Notwithstanding that, we have to deal with the facts that the Corrib Gas Field presents us with, and that is its current worth is anywhere between €9.5b and €22b, and our tax take from the profits is the lowest in any equivalent country in the world, money that we desperately require in our current extremis.

However, you are quite right, there's no point in comparing our mineral resources to Norway or Scotland........yet. And again, it's only fair to point out that Eamon Ryan has increased the tax burden back on the oil companies.

However, this thread is not about the resource issue, or the tax take, or the Rossport Five. It's about Frank Fahey's capacity for lucid decision making.

[Malbekh]

Just in regard to this particular point. In fairness, wouldn't refining projects come under the heading of industrial projects?

Interesting background material, though.

If it's the case that it was too expensive to do any refining at sea, I suppose we coulda suggested to Shell they just leave it sit until such time as they found it would be cost effective ... too late for that now, I guess!

Coillte seem to clarify that any sale of land to industrial projects would be through the local authority, so therefore a state body/private body (Coillte get confused which they are at some times) would be dealing directly with another state body.

There's a big difference to selling an acre to Mickey Flynn to build a new dormer to selling 300 acres to a multinational. The selling of state land to a state authority for a commercial enterprise would indicate some benefit to the state. This sell-off to the Shell consortium blatantly does no service to the State whatsoever.

In relation to Shell refining as sea. This was always going to happen unless Shell secured another site, something for which there is no suggestion to show that they did. The site provided for them by Fahey through his 'endeavours' are clearly unsuitable for the project to go ahead as planned as Bord Pleanala has made two rulings against it. The consequences for this is delaying the project coming on stream, thus effecting our meagre revenues, and the more substantial revenues that the conglomerate are making.

It's also cost us millions in fees for law enforcement, sent the natives into fits and starts of unrest, and left an exceptionally strong whiff of interference from unsavoury elements.

[Malbekh]

As is clear from Dick Spring’s action in ’85 something needed to be done and then equally clear from Ruairi Quinn’s statement in ’92 above, Spring’s effort produced no reaction from the exploration companies, Burke’s later action in ‘87 similarly produced no reaction from the exploration companies, therefore in ’92 it was necessary to go further to get them working.

Thanks for that clarification tonic, it's always a pleasure to have you and goosebump as editors to my threads as it keeps me on the straight and narrow.

[Malbekh]

A bit like Justin Keating insisting that the likes of Shell hand over 50% of the value of their finds, which resulted in how many finds?

That's unfair. We are not dealing with potential finds, we are dealing with a known find with a known quantity of high quality gas, with the potential for further finds in that quadrant.

Getting the gas to shore is an issue for the consortium, not the state. It is not the business of the state to facilitate the consortium in the manner that Fahey did for which there was no known benefit. This is the contention of the thread.

[pjoz]

Excellent OP and I notice you also have T**** in your fanclub. Does he ever sleep I wonder,you'd imagine trying to put out fires for FF would be quite draining and yet he spouts the party line at all hours of the day and night.Bravo to him I say.

[NewGoldDream]

Just want to state that this must be one of the best topic titles I have seen in a while!

Not going to get into the substance of the debate, because I don't think anyone with half a brain in FF would want to defend an odious little runt like Fahey. Still can't figure how someone who was on a teacher's salary and now on a bit more, and with very little discernible intelligence, has earned enough to amass the property portfolio he has put together.

[feargach]

OK, well AFAICS there is really only one issue to consider: are we legally entitled to impose a new levy on the consortium?

At other times, I would have considered blocking the project on environmental grounds.

But in the current economic disaster, we simply need the dosh.

So again: do we have the legal right to reverse policy?

Or is there some forum in which the consortium can sue us and win?

Also, and more importantly, are we actually required by some kind of legally-enforceable contract to facilitate the consortium with CPOs and sales of state land?

Is it possible that a secret contract exists that specifies all these things?

[stripey cat]

So again: do we have the legal right to reverse policy?

Or is there some forum in which the consortium can sue us and win?

A few years ago the United States was faced with a problem whereby through "administrative oversight", oil fields off the Florida coast were not providing any royalty to the country. Poorly written contracts allowed the oil companies to keep all their finds without providing a cut for the government. Although new terms were brought in to rectify the situation, the big energy companies like Shell were not prepared to change the terms of the deals they had already secured.

However, the Senate proposed legislation which insisted that companies which currently held licences on the old terms, would simply not be allowed to apply for new licences in American waters unless they re-negotiated the deals they already had. They called these new laws, which cleared up many loopholes in their system, the Oil Sense Act.

The United States Senate is not considered a hotbed of firebrand left-wing radicals, so it seems odd that we can't have a similar clear out of bad deals here in Ireland. Incidentally, the sponsor of the legislation was a young Senator from Illinois called Barack Obama. I wonder whatever happened to him?

[goosebump]

That's unfair. We are not dealing with potential finds, we are dealing with a known find with a known quantity of high quality gas, with the potential for further finds in that quadrant.

Getting the gas to shore is an issue for the consortium, not the state. It is not the business of the state to facilitate the consortium in the manner that Fahey did for which there was no known benefit. This is the contention of the thread.

The contract between the State and Shell was signed before exploration commenced and before anything substantive was known about the field.

As time passes, and oil becomes more valuable, it will be possible for the State to take a share of these finds.

But for that to happen, we need to build up refinement and distribution capacity, and expertise and knowledge about OGE in our territorial waters, so that the State knows the risks involved before commiting public funds to exploration projects. For that, we need private companies like Shell.

The difficult ynow is that Shell have been put through the ringer, which sends out all the wrong signals to other companies considering seeking exploration rights.

I fully expect that we won't see the development of any more fields for at least 20 years.