HyNet Carbon Dioxide Pipeline

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HyNet Carbon Dioxide Pipeline

Received 23 May 2023
From Liverpool Friends of The Earth

Representation

CR1 As a community organisation based within HyNet's geographical footprint, Liverpool Friends of The Earth (LFoE) wishes to make a representation. This will: (A), directly support and reference representations made earlier by four other Interested Parties, and (B), respond to the Applicant's D.7.16 May 2023 responses. This representation is further informed via Eni's answers at its May 10th 2023 AGM, to questions about the HyNet Carbon Dioxide Pipeline and Liverpool Bay CCS. The AGM questions were submitted by Italian advocacy group, ReCommon, partnering North West UK environmental groups, including LFoE A1) In support of Carolyn Thomas, MS: Responding to an AGM question, Eni acknowledges it will monitor the integrity of Liverpool Bay geology against CO2 leakage for only 20 years following final CO2 injection. We feel the period's shortness negates the rationale of the HyNet CO2 Pipeline A2) In support of Natural Resources Wales: We feel that Eni did not adequately respond to AGM questions relating to neither the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, WBFGA, nor strategic ramifications of Wales' Core Membership of The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA). Rather than merely noting 'a continuous dialogue with various departments of the Senedd (Welsh Government)', as Eni did, there should be clear responses detailing specific joint agreements in these spheres. There is no evidence that Eni has properly understood or strategically contextualised these policies' interfacings with the Pipeline proposals 3 & 4) In support of Councillor Andrew Farrow and Councillor Linda Thomas: In 2016, the UK Health and Safety Executive, in regard to a trunnion pipe supports failure in the Irish Sea, found that Eni had 'fail(ed) to ensure that dangerous situations are monitored at suitable intervals'. Despite Eni's 2023 AGM response that 'transport and storage of CO2 will take place in full compliance with what is required under the relevant legislation'; with this legacy of patchy infrastructure monitoring, can North Wales communities be confident that they will be fully and knowingly protected from failures of untested at-scale pipeline infrastructure? B) We acknowledge the Applicant's noting (Table 2.9 ExQ1, 1.9.3),'... have regard to the explicit guidance that WBFGA should be applied so as to avoid siloed approaches'. We do, however, suggest that globally overarching perspectives, fundamental to the spirit of both WBFGA and Wales' Core Membership of BOGA, make it untenable to focus on the HyNet Pipeline 'silo' alone: Eni's globally harmful portfolio of fossil fuel extractivism and ambition in Mozambique, The Gulf of Mexico, and Guinea-Bissau, cannot be ignored. Furthermore, following the global 'lobbying and greenwashing' lawsuit issued against Eni on May 9th 2023, by civil complainants in Rome, we feel that the financial footing of any major project where the Applicant is central, must be reappraised In relation to jobs, another of Eni's 2023 AGM responses suggests it does not fully understand that graduates, increasingly, do not wish to work for corporates whose global portfolios, as Eni's does, remain underpinned in the fossil fuel sector. Wrexham Glyndwr University has already banned fossil fuel companies from graduate recruitment fairs