Company offers compensation to lay gas pipeline across land

SHANNON LNG, the firm planning to build the State’s first liquified natural gas terminal on the Shannon Estuary, Co Kerry, has offered to compensate more than 60 landowners for permission to lay and operate a pipeline on their land.

The pipeline would link the giant terminal at Kilcolgan near Tarbert to the national gas network near Foynes, Co Limerick.

The landowners along the 25km route are being offered “a flexibility payment” of €5,000 along with various per metre payments. Early signing landowners stand to gain most.

However, the main objectors’ group against the project – there had been more than 60 objections to the planning application – warned landowners yesterday to “read the small print”.

No account has been taken of the real cost of sterilised land, and a site worth €80,000 would be “given away” for €5,000, Johnny McElligott, of the Kilcolgan Residents Association, claimed.

The permissions sought were permanent and the most a property owner giving a 400- metre strip would stand to gain was €32,400, said Mr McElligott.

He added the widths required were “very confusing” and they included a stipulation that the farmer could not object to a corridor of 50 metres either side of the proposed pipeline.

If the “sweetener” flexibility payment of €5,000 is deducted (this is paid providing the contract is returned by the end of the month), you are left with a payment of €27,400, which equates to €68.50 per linear metre, he said.

The width of the permanent land access is to be 14m but there are working strips varying in size. No planting is to be allowed within 7m of the strip, the contract stipulates.

The application for the project, estimated to cost at least €500 million, and backed by the US corporation Hess, on Shannon Development-owned land went straight to An Bord Pleanála under the new fast-track process for key infrastructural projects.

Following an oral hearing in Tralee earlier this year, the terminal with four gas storage towers as tall as Liberty Hall got the go-ahead last month.

The board had stipulated that no gas can leave the terminal by road so a pipeline is required.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times