A coalition of environmental groups has taken aim at the regulator of offshore decommissioning in a joint statement launched this morning in Canberra.
The Wilderness Society, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Friends of the Earth Melbourne, the Environment Centre Northern Territory and the Conservation Council Western Australia have issued a “statement of concern” lamenting the “failure” of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) to properly ensure companies such as Santos and Woodside clean up after their offshore extraction.
Crikey has written a lot about the potential coming crisis around redundant offshore rigs, the Northern Endeavour in particular. The statement of concern adds a further four case studies to illustrate the potential disasters trailing the thousands of decaying rigs off Australia’s shores. The case studies include Esso/Exxon Mobil projects in the Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania — some of which the company is attempting to abandon there — and Woodside’s (now removed) sinking oil rig off the Ningaloo reef in Western Australia.
The group places much of the blame at the door of regulator NOPSEMA, saying it has systemically failed to force companies to clean up the extensive infrastructure left in the ocean after oil and gas projects, including wells, pipelines, anchors, chains, rigs, towers, cabling and floating platforms. It notes that between 2012 — when the agency became responsible for environmental management regulation — and the Northern Endeavour disaster in 2020, NOPSEMA had failed to issue any clean-up notices until late 2020. The first approved clean-up environment plan wasn’t in place until 2022.
Clean-up delays have environmental implications, with the unarrested decay of these rigs having become a serious danger to workforces and the environment. Esso/Exxon Mobil’s Bass Strait project, for example, had two pipeline leaks earlier this year, in which chemicals and gas condensate leaked into the ocean.
NOPSEMA has been criticised as a “toothless tiger” by unions.
“The oil and gas industry’s neglect in properly decommissioning offshore infrastructure is an environmental disaster in the making,” head of climate and energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific Joe Rafalowicz said in an accompanying statement. “Our statement calls on the government to strengthen the power of regulators to hold these companies accountable.”
Of course, a decent regulator is all the more urgent given Labor keeps approving more offshore exploration.
Clarification: A previous version of this piece listed the Woodside oil rig off the Ningaloo reef among the “thousands of offshore rigs nearing the end of their lives”. It has now been updated to clarify that this oil rig has been removed.
