A Story Not Quite Over

November 28th, 2007

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Posted by ChrisG at 12:16 pm

News of the completion of the Milford Haven-Tirley pipeline crept out yesterday, with Malcolm Wickes, indefatigable defender of National Grid’s commercial interests against anyone else’s non-commercial ones, closing the valve at Felindre to send the first trickle of gas in. Although just how long it will take for the trickle to become the much-quoted ‘20% of the UK’s gas’ is anyone’s guess. And not just because of the continuing delays in getting the Milford Haven LNG terminal operational.

At the English end of the pipeline, the residents of Corse, Tirley and surrounding villages and towns are still waiting to hear about the outcome of the planning inquiry held earlier this year into the above-ground installation (AGI) which the Grid insists it wants to build in the vicinity. The result of this inquiry was due in October, but has yet to emerge, as we wait on Mr Wickes to decide, entirely impartially of course, whether the exceptionally well-argued and comprehensive case brought by the energetic legal team assembled by the local residents should be ignored in favour of a scheme to increase UK dependence on fossil fuels that cuts against the stated aims of UK Government energy policy.

But of course, this stage in the story of the pipeline is not being picked up anywhere, despite the heart of it – the changing relationship between democratic politics and securitized authoritarian government – being the key to understanding the wider significance of the pipeline itself. There is a scattering of dots here that need to be joined up, particularly in the wake of last year’s Barker Review of planning procedure. Its recommendation that a centralised, non-elected quango be given oversight of all major planning applications in order to ’speed up’ the process of approval is something that people living near Sizewell, Hinkley Point and Bradwell will no doubt be interested in.