South Wales pipeline

Over the past few months, protests over a pipeline carving its way through the Brecon Beacons have been gathering pace, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a long feature on the issue in last week's Guardian, How green was my valley (ok, anything about Wales in the Guardian surprises me).

Here's the one-minute version of the issue:
- There is a new liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire (south-west Wales) for tankers to arrive from abroad - but then the LNG needs to get around the country and link into the existing network
- So, a very very long pipeline is being constructed to stretch the breadth of Wales to a terminal in Gloucestershire - very long it is, 200 miles and estimated to cost £840m (which really means that it will cost much more than that).
- The problem is that not only, at a time of having to face the reality of climate change there are big questions about this kind of money being pumped into further fossil fuel projects, but that this pipeline will stretch right through the Brecon Beacons National Park - an area, of course, for special natural conservation.
- Large swathes of national park land will have to be dug up in order to bury the pipeline and there will be some blasting with explosives too to clear the way.

The real gist of Paul Harris' article is of how the project has been forced through against local objections and concerns, dominated by London planning from the Department for Trade and Industry:
"To many people, the pipeline's arrival speaks volumes about what government and corporate power can pull off in parts of the UK that rarely catch the attention of the London-based media."

Fellow students have been / are / will be at a protest camp in Trebanos, undertaking direct action against the pipeline construction. The original plan called for the project to be completed by November, and, as the BBC reported last autumn, it costs something close to £2m for each additional month of delay - which, while not massive, is not small change either.

If you want further information about protest activities I can put you in touch with some South Wales-based colleagues who are following the situation closer than I am.

Unrelated Update: Closer to home, the DTI is being very very quiet (see Leila's blog, 30 April) on the outcome of its decision to license for oil & gas exploration in Cardigan Bay since it announced earlier in the year that it would be taking extra time, including consideration for environmental impact. A hint of holding back the bad news until after the election, maybe...?