A coalition of environmental teams has taken goal on the regulator of offshore decommissioning in a joint assertion launched this morning in Canberra.
The Wilderness Society, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Buddies of the Earth Melbourne, the Setting Centre Northern Territory and the Conservation Council Western Australia have issued a “assertion of concern” lamenting the “failure” of the Nationwide Offshore Petroleum Security and Environmental Administration Authority (NOPSEMA) to correctly guarantee corporations corresponding to Santos and Woodside clear up after their offshore extraction.
Crikey has written rather a lot concerning the potential coming disaster round redundant offshore rigs, the Northern Endeavour particularly. The assertion of concern provides an extra 4 case research illustrating the potential catastrophe trailing the hundreds of offshore rigs nearing the tip of their lives, together with the Esso/Exxon Mobil tasks within the Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania and Woodside’s sinking oil rig off the Ningaloo reef in Western Australia.
The group locations a lot of the blame on the door of regulator NOPSEMA, saying it has systemically did not pressure corporations to wash up the in depth infrastructure left within the ocean after oil and gasoline tasks, together with wells, pipelines, anchors, chains, rigs, towers, cabling and floating platforms. It notes that between 2012 — when the company grew to become accountable for environmental administration regulation — and the Northern Endeavour catastrophe in 2020, NOPSEMA had did not challenge any clean-up notices till late 2020. The primary accepted clean-up surroundings plan wasn’t in place till 2022.
Clear-up delays have environmental implications, with the unarrested decay of those rigs having turn out to be a severe hazard to workforces and the surroundings. Esso/Exxon Mobil’s Bass Strait venture, for instance, had two pipeline leaks earlier this 12 months, during which chemical compounds and gasoline condensate leaked into the ocean.
NOPSEMA has been criticised as a “toothless tiger” by unions.
“The oil and gasoline business’s neglect in correctly decommissioning offshore infrastructure is an environmental catastrophe within the making,” head of local weather and vitality at Greenpeace Australia Pacific Joe Rafalowicz mentioned in an accompanying assertion. “Our assertion calls on the federal government to strengthen the ability of regulators to carry these corporations accountable.”
In fact, an honest regulator is all of the extra pressing given Labor retains approving extra offshore exploration.
