Washington Examiner
By: SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press
06/20/09 7:10 PM EDT
DUBLIN About 15 masked men armed with steel bars, chains and nail-studded clubs ransacked a Shell pipeline site, police said Thursday, in the latest trouble for Ireland’s most controversial energy project.
The vandals smashed security fences Wednesday shortly before midnight and forced unarmed guards on duty to retreat. One guard suffered an arm injury when struck by a steel pipe, according to Ireland’s national police force.
Shell has spent four years battling opponents of the project in both the courts and on the ground in rural County Mayo, where the global energy giant has government permission to pump natural gas from an untapped field 80 kilometers (50 miles) out in the Atlantic.
Opponents claim the project threatens to destroy the environment of the sparsely populated and remote coastline, and have argued that Shell should fully refine the natural gas off shore an option Shell and other experts say would be more difficult and dangerous. Instead, Shell is building a refinery 9 kilometers (5 miles) inland.
The masked raiders on Wednesday night targeted the spot where the pipeline comes ashore. Shell renewed pipe-laying efforts there earlier this month.
Police said the raiders hot-wired a construction vehicle and used it to smash perimeter fencing and a security hut. A truck also was vandalized.
The gang fled before police arrived Thursday morning, and no arrests were reported.
It was the first time a paramilitary-style gang has attacked a Shell site in Ireland.
Previously, Shell opponents have staged hunger strikes, sit-down protests on roads approaching the refinery site, and gone to prison for ignoring court orders. Ireland’s police at times have deployed more than 200 officers to the remote site to clear roads of protesters and protect construction workers.
Ireland currently is heavily dependent on imported energy, including nuclear-generated electricity from Britain. Much of its homegrown energy generation comes from burning bricks of bog soil called peat, a policy also criticized by environmentalists as destructive and polluting.
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On the Net:
Shell’s Corrib Field site, http://tinyurl.com/c6ppn8
Anti-Shell protesters, http://www.corribsos.com/
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
MORE DETAILS:
A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
Whatever our views on the merits, or otherwise, of Corrib I am sure that we will all condemn this mindless violence.