Tasmanian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said Esso’s inability to manage its operational infrastructure safely was “deeply troubling given the company’s currently applying to use old gas fields for dumping carbon pollution”. Photo: ExxonMobil Australia.
The offshore industry regulator NOPSEMA has given Esso Australia 60 days to rectify defects that led to its third spill off the Victorian coast in the past six months.
Australia’s subsidiary of the multinational gas company ExxonMobil has been put on notice for spilling “approximately 21,000 litres of diesel” into Bass Strait.
It comes nearly a month after the Victorian Government launched an inquiry into gas decommissioning (28 August), which acting leader of the Greens Sarah Mansfield believes “has never been more urgent”.
“There are currently hundreds and gas and oil wells across Victoria leaking gas and oil into our oceans and it’s taxpayers who are being left to foot the bill to clean it up,” she said.
“Both the Victorian and Federal Labor governments need a plan to fix this and hold the fossil fuel corporations to account.”
NOPSEMA issued Esso with the findings of its recent petroleum environmental inspection of their Marlin B facility on 12 September.
The inspector in charge declared that Esso had breached environmental management law, was likely to do so again and “as a result, there is, or may be, a significant threat to the environment”.
On 8 August the company told NOPSEMA that one of its operators had found a valve still in the open position after it was used to transfer diesel fuel the previous day. Later Esso personnel observed an “oil sheen” at the north side of Marlin B.
Under the Bass Strait Environment Plan, platform operations are expected to have “no spills to the environment”.
However during their inspection, NOPSEMA personnel observed that Esso had failed to rectify “known defects” in the environmentally critical system, resulting in overfilling of a diesel storage tank and approximately 21,000 L of diesel being spilt into the ocean.
“The failure of the control systems in place to prevent overfill of the firewater pump diesel storage tank and for controlling the level of hydrocarbons held in the open pile, resulted in hydrocarbons being released into the environment,” according to the notice.
A range of species live within the Bass Strait marine ecosystem, some of which are listed under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
The inspector believes this “direct discharge” poses a “significant threat” to their environment as it “can cause lethal or sub-lethal effects to marine fauna, such as disruption to feeding or breeding behaviour and, skin and eye irritations”.
Based on the regulator’s findings, NOPSEMA believes that Esso “is likely to contravene” environment regulations again.
The gas company has until 11 November to “remove the threat”.
In response to the notice, Tasmanian Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said NOPSEMA was “failing to take the strong actions necessary to rein in the fossil fuel giant”.
“NOPSEMA is supposed to have oversight and regulate the environmental management of the offshore fossil fuel industry, but coastal communities are fast losing confidence in the ‘independent’ regulator, which has become more of an enabler than an investigator of offshore oil and gas projects,” he said.
“Australia desperately needs stronger laws and regulations to govern the offshore fossil fuel industry – how much more must our oceans and marine wildlife suffer before the Albanese Government acts to change this?”
