Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is critical to the State’s energy security, a member of the Government’s infrastructure taskforce warned on Tuesday.
The Oireachtas passed legislation this year giving the Minister for Energy, Darragh O’Brien, power to bypass planning laws to approve a proposed State LNG storage project.
Businessman Seán O’Driscoll, a member of the Government’s Accelerating Infrastructure Task Force, told the Institute of Directors annual conference that he had heard arguments in the media that the Republic does not need LNG.
“Thirty per cent of our primary energy is gas,” he said, adding that it came through a pipeline from Scotland.
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“If anything happens those pipelines, our economy shuts down in three or four hours. For people to peddle the line, and get away with it, that we don’t need LNG facilities, is complacency,” O’Driscoll argued.
He remarked that the State took a lot of risks with its energy system. While it depends on imported oil for 50 per cent of its energy, its strategic reserve amounts to just 90 days’ supply, O’Driscoll added.
Speaking afterwards, he said the enactment of the Critical Infrastructure Act and new planning laws showed the Government’s commitment to overhauling the State’s system for planning and building infrastructure.
The infrastructure legislation means that key projects move the top of the planning system’s queue. Government has since earmarked nine projects, in transport, energy and water as critical infrastructure.
