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Look at any planning issue with an environmental impact, and this becomes apparent – especially where there is a trade-off between some definition of “national interest” and local impact, as with energy infrastructure (wind turbines as much as nuclear power stations). Risk has, for example, been at the heart of so many of the conflicts which sprang up along the length of the South Wales Gas Pipeline while it was being built.

It’s important to understand that risks are not free-floating objects with which we simply collide. They are created through social relationships, and are impossible to understand outside these relationships, which are themselves inflected by inequalities of power. For example, I am a “financial innovator”, and so get to run a risk, if I choose to; whereas, you, as a homeowner, get to have one imposed on you when my flush is busted. Risks which are imposed are typically viewed as less acceptable than ones which are chosen – and the consequences of imposing risks can be individually and socially serious harms: creating social conflicts further down the line (splitting communities, breaking implicit links of trust and so on), and entrenching exploitative and oppressive relationships (testified to by the history of environmental racism and environmental justice more widely, and nicely summed up by William Freudenberg’s remark regarding how often technical planning criteria tend to be satisfied “on the poor side of town”). The sociological and psychological evidence for the damage done by the imposition of risk and the attendant everyday uncertainty it brings is contained in, for example, the work of Peter Marris, Michael Edelstein and Kai Erikson.

This is why it is vital to ensure that there is some kind of mechanism through which explicit consent from those who will bear the risk can be sought and given. But here it is vital that there is transparency about what risks are actually involved. And here the problem of planning often gets entangled with the discourse of “security”, especially when it is energy security that is at issue. Information about installations of “national importance” is now held to be highly sensitive, and is subject to the DA-Notice system, where these installations come under the definition of Critical National Infrastructure. Consequently, transparency – before the issue of whether democratic means of seeking consent are in place – tends to falter at the first hurdle.

This has undoubtedly been the experience of campaigners against the LNG terminals at Milford Haven and those fighting the South Wales Gas Pipeline. In particular, the tortuous battle fought by campaigners at Milford to get the authorities to release copies of risk assessments undertaken on the full spectrum of risks (and uncertainties) surrounding the use of LNG tankers in the Cleddau estuary demonstrates that the basic elements of proper consent are ignored and suppressed by the conjunction of corporate and political interests that defines energy policy in terms of “energy security”. But now, the long, hard-fought campaign has struck a major blow thanks to a demand by the European Court of Human Rights.

The court has said it wants more details. It has asked the government which bodies had responsibility for assessing the risks and advising the planning authorities, and how responsibility was divided. In particular, the court wants to know if the relevant authorities “properly assessed the risk and consequences of a collision of LNG vessels, or other escape of LNG from a vessel in Milford Haven harbour or while berthed at the jetty”, and if “relevant information on the nature and extent of the risk posed by the hazardous industrial activities has been disclosed to the public”.

The UK Government has until February to respond, and to enable some of the questions which have gone unaddressed since 2004 to finally get an answer.

(meant to write this up earlier in the week, but have been hit by the lurgy)

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“The truth is we’re not going to be able to deliver a 21st-century energy system with a 20th-century planning system,” said Miliband. “Saying no everywhere would not be in the national interest.”

The great leap forward, coming soon to the neighbourhood of an knackered nuclear facility near you (for us that’s Hinkley Point, just across the Bristol Channel).

Second, LNG developments across the Irish Sea. The long-running saga of the Co Mayo Corrib gas field pipeline has produced a victory for campaigners against the pipeline and associated Shannon LNG terminal who have been seeking to have the gas pipeline rerouted away from their homes.

In a letter to Shell yesterday, the board said documentation provided by the oil and gas giant did not present a “complete, transparent and adequate demonstration that the pipeline does not pose an unacceptable risk to the public”. It said that more than half the route, or 5.6km, ran too close to homes, which was “unacceptable”, and that it must be re-routed.

Debates over siting decisions often do not turn around differences of opinion between experts over the probability of an accident, i.e. debates over the correct way to interpret current scientific evidence concerning recognised safety factors. Often, the key issue is acceptability of risk, which can have nothing to do with probability – for example, the nature of possible consequences and the degree to which a risk has been imposed on someone without their consent may be cited. In other words, siting conflicts tend to turn on ethical and political questions of value, which debates that restrict themselves to issues of risk probabilities cannot address. The unacceptability for local residents of many of the siting decisions taken around the South Wales Gas Pipeline and Milford Haven LNG terminals concerned precisely the nature of the potential consequences of placing potentially dangerous infrastructure (and in Milford, with its existing petrochemical industries, of cascading risks) in close proximity to communities, and also the failure to seek the consent of those living there who would suffer these consequences should they materialise.

The decision on the Corrib pipeline is interesting (and welcome) because it locates the siting decision in its proper social and political context: consequences and consent matter more than mere probability. It’s unfortunate that Miliband and the UK Government have decided that they should base their future energy policy on doing their utmost to continue undermining this principle.

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Which gives me an opportunity to point up the latest update from CAPRI over in Gloucestershire provide on the progress of their ongoing campaign to stop National Grid completing the (still unfinished) pipeline by building intrusive and potentially hazardous infrastructure in their vicinity.

Following a well-conducted campaign back in 2007, CAPRI succeeded in getting the original planning proposal thrown out. The planning tribunal’s judgement included harsh criticism of National Grid for engaging in deceptive practices, especially concerning the existence of detailed risk assessments. On being asked to produce the appropriate assessment documentation for the proposed installation, a very brief – and generic – summary document was brought out. When the tribunal asked for the original, “it proved impossible to locate it” (as a member of CAPRI I interviewed last year wryly put it).

Seems the Grid have now issued an entirely speculative compulsory purchase order for land on which their installation would be built – should the planning proposal they have (re)submitted be allowed. Whilst doing so, they appear to have indulged once again their predilection for misrepresentation, stating that they have engaged in “extensive discussions” with CAPRI (which the group vehemently denies). This is perhaps not surprising given their insistence earlier on in the re-submission process that they had consulted “at each stage” with CAPRI in narrowing down the number of possible sites – something which CAPRI pointed out angrily was an outright fabrication, designed presumably to make the resubmission process appear vaguely legitimate.

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ETAs for the vessel have of course varied widely, just like projected completion dates for the terminals and South Wales gas pipeline. We heard 9 February at one point, 12 February another time. It’ll probably take around 9-10 days to reach Milford in good weather, so even if it reaches full steam ahead today, it won’t be here before March.

That is of course if Milford is, indeed, going to be the destination.

The Tembek has been anchored off Malta since at least the end of January – is it waiting for a signal from Exxon Mobil, triggered by changes in the spot price gas market, which will see it heading off to Italy, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan or even Korea in response to the waving of metaphorical handfuls of euros, dollars or yen?

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“We are in the final stages of completion and we are expecting it to be onstream in the second quarter of this year,” a BG spokesman said.

So, April at the earliest then. South Hook is still supposed to be coming online this month, possibly even next week.

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The problems have been fully documented by an independent group of civil engineers and metallurgists who inspected the pipe while it was being laid. Their report is available here. Therein, they note that:

The pipe has not been laid throughout in accordance with this specification which requires a bed of fine material 6” or 150mm thick to be provided, and the pipe then to be surrounded with the same minimum thickness of fine material in the course of back filling, up to 6” over the top of the pipe. All sharp objects are to be excluded from this bed and surrounding, stones and such like. This is correctly required in order to preserve intact the anti-corrosion coating provided over the whole outer surface of all the pipes. Wherever this coating is damaged, corrosion will start immediately, and lead to explosions sooner than would otherwise be the case.

Numerous spots along the pipeline where this procedure has not been followed were photographed – here’s a couple of examples (click on images for larger versions).

Other problems, such as voids being left under the pipe which contribute to strain and further damage, were also documented.

The Carlsbad gas pipeline explosion in 2000 in New Mexico is thought to have been caused by internal corrosion. 12 people from the same family were killed by the detonation, which left a 17-metre wide crater and projected an eight-and-a-half metre piece of steel pipe a distance of nearly a hundred metres. The corrosion is thought to have been caused by increased levels of chlorides in the pipe, resulting from microbial activity. A vital precaution against this sort of internal corrosion is to ensure internal welds are cleaned and painted before the pipe is sealed. This, it appears, has not been done in several cases.

There’s plenty more, and the European Commission has been poring over the pretty pix for a while now.

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Pembrokeshire council’s head of civil contingencies Richard Brown:

People can turn up anytime and talk directly with representatives from the emergency services and supporting agencies. I think they will be reassured that the risk of an incident is very low and that the safety standards are extremely high and, in the very unlikely event there is a problem, there are good multi-agency response plans in place to mitigate the impacts.

Telling people that contingency plans (presumably, to rescue whoever manages to survive an initial explosion…) exist and explaining the extent of current knowledge about LNG risks are two very different things. It’s interesting that the case against the siting of the terminals, together with the linked case (on safety grounds, citing multiple violations of best practice by under-pressure and under-supervised subcontractors) against National Grid’s South Wales Gas Pipeline which is up before the European Commission included in its evidence the manifest failure on the part of the Milford Haven Port Authority to date to publish a full risk assessment for the proposed operation.

As well as providing a full account of the risk scenarios and associated assessments, it’s necessary to give a full acknowledgement of where uncertainty and ignorance, as opposed to quantified estimates of risks, limit a full understanding of the situation. International best practice on the siting of LNG terminals discourages placing them in multi-use ports, precisely because of the extra risk factors and complex interactions between such factors that this would bring. The LNG transporters to be used are themselves new and largely untried.

Criticisms of objections to the siting of energy infrastructure are generally advanced on the grounds that protestors appeal to emotion above rationality. It’s rather more often the case that objections are based on the failure of the relevant authorities to disclose essential information, particularly where this information concerns what they do not know and perhaps cannot know. The acceptability of risks cannot be rightly decided on the basis of one party to the decision concealing from other parties the nature of the risks involved, insofar as they are known. This ethical principle is one which objectors to installations like the South Hook LNG plant understand only too well.

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Jill put forward the petition, in conjunction with campaigners from Milford and along the route of the new South Wales gas pipe, to request an investigation by the EC of the manifold failures of consultation and engineering best practice which dogged the construction of the still largely non-functional pipeline. The case underlying the petition is one which ultimately rests on a moral principle: that, as a privatised company with special public responsibilities due to the nature of its business, National Grid’s activities fall under the European Convention of Human Rights.

And today, I learn that

The Plaid MEP had been due to meet senior officials at the European Commission in Brussels last week to seek an update on progress, but the meeting was cancelled because the UK authorities had not provided a response.

The deadline for a response from the Government to the petition and investigation is today, 16 December. It’s now been nearly a year since the Government decided, under intense public and judicial pressure, to reject the Grid’s plans to impose a huge, noisy and unnecessary piece of infrastructure on Tirley and Corse in Gloucestershire.

The many failures to follow safety practices in laying the pipe itself have been well documented: what will DBERR make of the evidence which Jill and her colleagues have presented of its predecessor’s failure to properly oversee the Grid’s and the Milford LNG companies’ activities? The clock is ticking.

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International piracy is being considered at EU level, and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise that important question. I think that he is also raising the question of the new terminal at Milford Haven, which we hope will be ready next spring. That is very important for bringing in supplies of gas as it will be able to provide up to 20 per cent. of UK gas supplies.

So first it was Autumn 2007, then Spring 2008, then Autumn 2008, and now it’s sometime in Spring 2009.

The South Wales Gas Pipeline: “keeping the lights on” since, er, sometime next year – maybe…

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