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Metgasco Truck Rams Bicycle at Glenugie Protest

Photo and article by Sue Vader

 On the 6th of December in what appears to be an incident of intimidation, a Metgasco truck rammed a protestor's bicycle at the  protest against the  CSG drilling at Glenugie . You probably saw pictures of this on facebook, however there was little or no explanation of what happened. Sue Vader has sent in this report of the event, which happened a few minutes before she arrived at the Glenugie drilling site.

Mangled Bicycle and Unintentional Bravery

We arrived down at The Avenue Glenugie at 11.10 am on Sunday 9th December - a couple of minutes after Nick had been driven at by one of the Metgasco work vehicles, mangling the rear of his bicycle - he was standing around a bit shell-shocked as we arrived. When I congratulated him on his bravery in standing up to (or slowly cycling in front of) the OUTSIZE truck carrying the water pump needed for the drill site which, incidentally, wasn't the vehicle that rammed him), he replied modestly that it was quite unintentional bravery - he didn't really think any of the Metgasco employees would be that ruthless.

Police Called to Traffic Accident

However, intentionally or unintentionally, it was a real coup in stopping Metgasco because, of course, the police had to be called to the scene of the "accident" - and they took 2 hours to get out there(which was nice of them) and then probably another hour to laboriously interview everybody involved. The policewoman who was in charge was great. She and I exchanged rueful smiles as she walked back and forth between the different participants in the drama and I definitely felt she was sympathetic to the cause - but you'd better not quote me on that.

Various other strategies were then employed (like a wheel being lost, seemingly irretrievably, from a car; somebody being parked in the middle of the road, the locked car unable to be opened because the keys had been lost)and in the end Metgasco were thwarted from entering the site that day. And I don't think they've been back since. When they do come back I don't think it'll be quite such a low key atmosphere.

Luckily Nick was able to jump clear of his bike and avoided any injury. I've attached a pic of his bike which was subsequently transformed into a Calder-esque not-so-mobile mobile at the gateway to the drill site.

Sue Vader