Western People: Shell dismisses pipeline report: “The Managing Director of Shell E & P, Mr Andy Pyle has dismissed the report launched last week on the Corrib project by the Centre for Public Inquiry as “speculative and emotive and based on a limited amount of technical information”.: Posted Thursday 1 December 2005

The Managing Director of Shell E & P, Mr Andy Pyle has dismissed the report launched last week on the Corrib project by the Centre for Public Inquiry as “speculative and emotive and based on a limited amount of technical information”.

Mr Pyle said that Shell was not contacted by the authors of the report or by the President of the US-based pipeline consulting firm who prepared a separate assessment and the report was therefore based in limited information. He said the report repeated many concerns that had already been expressed in public.

Mr Pyle said what would be of real importance would be the report from the Government appointed independent safety review group which he believed would be available in the near future.

Asked about the comments in the CPI report about pressures in the pipeline and the dangers of rupture, Mr Pyle said they had always said the line was designed for pressure of 345 Bar and that it would operate at not more than 120 Bar.
“The whole system shuts down if it goes above 135 bar,” he added.

In relation to all of this the CPI misunderstood the design details which went back to what he said earlier about the author of the report not having access to the full data.

Mr Pyle said he had a big concern about the report because it concentrated on consequences rather than risk of something going seriously wrong.

“It is like saying what are the consequences of a tall building falling down. They would be fairly catastrophic but we know the risk of it happening are practically nil,” he said.

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