Ireland must restart its exploitation of native oil and gas resources off its Western coast to abate the ongoing energy crisis, a spokesman for the ongoing fuel protests has said.
James Geoghegan, identified as a PRO for the movement, stated in a radio broadcast that the current difficulties being faced by the general public could be traced to a ban on fossil fuel exploration passed in 2019.
Spearheaded by then-Green Party chief Eamon Ryan, the prohibition was inspired by the desire to make Ireland carbon neutral by 2050.
Although the restriction was not supposed to apply to any oil and gas projects already handed approval in previous years, such attempts to search for native fossil fuel resources also faced serious regulatory issues.
“It was Eamon Ryan who knocked it on the head and that has to be looked at again now and revisited for the good of the nation,” Geoghegan said.
He added that protesters had already been contacted by various oil and gas representatives, who insist there are untapped resources off the country’s Western coast.
Legacy media outlet Newstalk has since claimed that reserves of oil and gas “in Irish waters are understood to be minimal”.
This claim is seemingly contradicted by both public and private data, with some estimates indicating that as much as 6.5 billion barrels worth of recoverable oil could be within Ireland’s exclusive economic zone.
As previously reported by Gript, this represents a supply large enough to fuel Ireland at current demand for 130 years.