Norwegian company Equinor has released an environment plan on Bight drilling.

The company insisted that drilling could be carried out safely and wants to start drilling at a depth of almost 2.5 kilometres by the end of 2020. The plan is to drill the Stromlo-1 exploratory well to test for oil 370 kilometres off the South Australian coast. Equinor plans to use a rig that floats on pontoons. From there it’ll drill into the seabed, which is 2,239 metres below the surface. There could be a resource about 2,700 m below the seabed.” It needs approval from the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA).

Critics of Equinor’s plans say the conditions in the Bight are too rough for the company to conduct underwater drilling safely. Equinor claims the conditions are equivalent to the North Sea, where it’s operated for decades.

Activists are fearful about the possible effects of a catastrophic oil spill. A leaked document obtained by Greenpeace contained maps of Australia’s coastline which outlined the extent of a serious spill, basically affecting the whole southern coastline of Australia.

Fred Pawle of the right wing Menzies Research Centre said: ‘The response from the perpetually outraged has been to misinterpret a map of the area that would be affected by a spill, share it extensively on social media and invite people to send their objections. The illustration looks scary but thankfully it is an illusion,’ he added, pointing out that the map did not show one spill but ‘areas that could be affected by any one of 100 scenarios.’

The marine life impacts of a moderate scenario major spill seem pretty real with spills ashore at Port Lincoln, Kangaroo Island and all of SE Sth Australia and the western Victorian coast. This includes the biodiversity hotspots of the Kangaroo Island and Bonney upwellings.

In 2016, BP’s worst-case scenario for an oil spill in the Great Australian Bight was “oiling of 650km coastline at 125 days after the spill, increasing to 750km after 300 days”. Even that more moderate assessment is a pretty bad spill.

The report discusses using a “capping stack” to plug a major leak but that equipment is kept 15 days travel away in Singapore. Then if its rough (which it often is) they cant deploy it. Equinor are guessing they could cap a leak in 102 days. An undisclosed map showed oil could reach as far as Port Macquarie under a “worst credible case” scenario.

Basically, a huge spill is very very unlikely but it will have monster impacts if it does happen.

“Commercial fisheries and aquaculture may be affected by temporary fishery closures, restrictions on sales … or effects to market value,” the report said.

“The effect of a 102-day release of oil on Australian sea lions could have a very long or permanent impact on a population that is already in decline.”

James Cook University marine biologist Dr Jodie Rummer said the environmental testing framework that looked at the impact of drilling in the Bight needed to consider the effect of increased noise and human presence on marine life.

The draft environment plan was put to public consultation for 30 days, which Greenpeace said was not long enough to allow expert assessment. NOPSEMA received more than 30,000 submissions. Equinor now have to prepare a report detailing how they have considered relevant comments. The public comment report and the amended environment plan will be published by Equinor on formal submission of the plan to NOPSEMA. The timing of a formal submission is a matter for Equinor, and is not set by NOPSEMA.

“Australian rules, unfortunately, don’t even require them to put forward the safest plan possible. They just have to put forward the safest plan that they think is cost-effective.” Said Greenpeace.

Equinor appears to have got in ahead of amendments to the Environment Regulations to increase the transparency of offshore oil and gas environment plans. This will only come into force from 25 April 2019. “NOPSEMA encourages all titleholders planning to submit environment plans prior to 25 April to voluntarily publish their environment plans and seek public feedback on them”.

NOPSEMA’s proposed updates to regulatory policies, guidance and forms to give effect to the transparency amendments have been released for public comment and are available at: https://www.nopsema.gov.au/news-and-media/news-announcement/2019/03/26/transitioning-to-transparency-ep-guidance-open-for-comment/

The Norwegian Government has a 67 per cent majority stake in Equinor. In response to a Norwegian MP’s call for drilling to stop, Equinor issued a statement on Monday, saying after two years of research, consultation and preparation, its environmental plan (EP) showed it could drill safely in the Bight. The South Australian Government insisted that Equinor and its project would have to meet high standards.

13 wells have been drilled since 1972, the most recent in 2006. Despite the talk of a massive jobs and revenues none of these wells found any resource. In 2013, BP said the area could be as productive as the Mississippi Delta oil region, then pulled out of exploration. They would have blamed environmental restrictions but I suspect rising costs and modest prospects were the determining factors. Talk about an oil spill the size of the Gulf of Mexico Deep Horizon spill are also only realistic if substantial volumes of oil are even there.