Pttep Australasia

PTTEP AUSTRALASIA

Submission to the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia’s Inquiry into Opportunities for Expanding the Aquaculture Industry in Northern Australia

Introduction

PTTEP Australasia (PTTEP) makes this submission to respond to those parts of the submission of the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) that are factually incorrect or consist of unsubstantiated claims concerning the damage allegedly cause by the Montara oil spill incident on 21 August 2009.

On behalf of the oil and gas industry we would also like to provide some context regarding the perceived and actual risks to an expanded aquaculture industry from oil and gas exploration and production activities in the Timor Sea.

Impacts of the Montara oil spill

The ALA submission makes a number of unsubstantiated claims which could lead the Inquiry to misinterpret the real, rather than perceived, risks to an expanded aquaculture industry.

PTTEP accepted accountability and responsibility for the mistakes that were made leading to the Montara incident, and deeply regrets the incident occurring. The Montara Commission of Inquiry investigated the incident and a significant monetary penalty was imposed on the company by the offshore petroleum safety regulator for breaches of our duty of care to personnel. No Australian environmental laws were broken by PTTEP.

The ALA submission overlooks or ignores the important difference between the occurrence of the Montara incident and proving its consequences.

PTTEP has always acknowledged that some weathered remnant oil entered Indonesian waters, but the position remains that no credible evidence has been presented to confirm that Montara oil reached the Indonesian shoreline, and no verifiable scientific evidence that it impacted any resources or on the extent and effects of any such impact.

The Montara Environmental Monitoring Program showed there was no long term damage to the marine environment, notably at various reefs and shoals in Australian waters closest to Montara. All these studies are publically available in full through both the DoE and PTTEP Australasia websites.

The ALA submission contains a number of speculative and misleading comments about the alleged consequences of the incident. These comments include that, as a direct result of the Montara oil spill:

• Indonesian communities more than 250km away from Montara witnessed oil break onto their shorelines, devastating mangroves and coral, as well as the destruction of their seaweed farms;

• Communities more than 190km north of this point (our italics: it is unclear what point the ALA submission is referring to ie. Montara or communities more than 250km away from Montara) also reported damage to the seaweed industry, meaning communities hundreds of kilometres apart experienced similar effects to their aquaculture industry;

• That six years on from the Montara incident, the environment of Nusa Tenggara Timur is still struggling as a result of the oil spill.

No verifiable evidence has been presented to support the claimed reports from Indonesian communities and repeated by ALA that oil was seen in fishing grounds and washed up on the coast, and that the seaweed and fishing industries of Nusa Tenggara Timur have been affected as a direct result of the Montara incident.

In contrast, there is a credible body of scientific evidence, including surveys and studies by Australia’s leading independent research organisations in conjunction with the Australian Government, which establish that:

• No oil reached the Indonesian coast or had any impact on Indonesian shorelines or inshore waters;

• The presence of the strong Indonesian through flow current minimised the chance that any oil reached Indonesia’s coastlines;

• The nearest detectable hydrocarbons to the Indonesian coastline were more that 90km from the shore; and

• 98% of the areas affected by the oil remained within Australian waters.

The oil spill trajectory studies performed as part of the Montara Environmental Monitoring Program utilised all available information, including aerial surveillance reports and photography, recorded observations from vessels and aircraft, satellite imagery, and tidal, wind and dispersant data sets.

Furthermore, one of the independent studies undertaken by the Australian Institute of Marine Science into the effects of the Montara spill on reefs and shoals closest to the well-head platform found no obvious signs of disturbance six months after the spill and concluded that any effects of oil reaching these reefs were minor and transitory and that there was no evidence of a broad disturbance that correlated with impacts from the Montara spill (See Montara Environmental Monitoring Programme: Shoreline Ecological Ground Surveys (Corals) - report S6 at: http://www.environment.gov.au/marine/marine-pollution/montara-oil-spill/scientific-monitoring- studies).

Implications for an expanded aquaculture industry in Northern Australia

Following the Montara incident, and the 2010 Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Australian Government, working with the oil and gas industry, undertook a range of investigations into industry processes and practices to ensure risks to the safety of its workforce and the environment were minimised.

In May 2013, the Australian Government passed a landmark amendment to the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act to strengthen Australia’s offshore petroleum regulatory regime to better protect the marine environment. It also imposed new statutory responsibilities on operators to respond to an oil spill and pay all costs of clean-up, remediation of the environment and environmental monitoring.

Operators, Non Operators, Contractors, Service Providers, and Regulators now all carry a higher level of accountability for managing the safety of people and the protection of Australia’s pristine marine environment.

Nobody in our industry would ever claim that an oil spill is a benign event in the environment. All oil and gas operators do everything possible to prevent a spill from ever happening.

Sharing the lessons learnt from the Montara incident with industry and governments has been an important contribution to improving the industry’s safety and operational performance. Sharing the environmental knowledge we have gained through the incident is also vital to protecting our valuable marine and coastal habitats for the future.

As an industry we take seriously our responsibilities to engage with all stakeholders within our areas of operations. The environmental planning process under Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act - now regulated by NOPSEMA - provides statutory obligations for open and effective consultation with relevant persons or organisations on petroleum activities. Stakeholder consultation is a fundamental aspect of the environmental management regime for petroleum activities in Commonwealth waters and increasingly a focus for NOPSEMA in its role as the regulator for the Australian offshore oil and gas industry.

PTTEP recognises that consultation is a process which is mutually beneficial to both the party undertaking the consultation and those being consulted on offshore petroleum activities. All titleholders have a responsibility to ensure that relevant stakeholders are appropriately identified and consulted in accordance with legislative requirements. NOPSEMA’s review process checks that all relevant stakeholders have been identified and consulted appropriately.

Issues or concerns raised by relevant stakeholders are a mechanism for titleholders to ensure that any potential adverse impacts of the activity are identified and mitigated, and that additional control measures are adopted where appropriate. Early engagement, appropriate consultation strategies and respectful communication techniques lead to more effective interaction with relevant stakeholders and ultimately increase the likelihood of meeting the consultation requirements of the regulations.

In December 2014, Australia’s oil and gas industry through its peak body APPEA signed a landmark agreement with five of the nation’s peak commercial fishing, aquaculture and seafood industry associations. The Memorandum of Understanding established principles of co-operation, communication and consultation between APPEA and fishing industry bodies with members operating in Western Australian, South Australian, Victorian, Northern Territory and Commonwealth waters.

Under the MOU, the industry groups committed to meet regularly through a roundtable process and to seek to resolve issues through better sharing of information. The agreement also encourages the development of joint initiatives or policies that will benefit both industries.

Through this framework of improved regulation and cooperation, an expanded aquaculture industry and the activities of the oil and gas industry across Northern Australia can coexist successfully. Open and regular communication, greater levels of cooperation and appropriate levels of regulation will provide the most effective framework for sustainable development across Northern Australia, to protect the environment and ensure the living standards of our communities are improved without compromising sustainable development goals.

PTTEP Australasia

8th July 2015