{"id":144936,"date":"2024-10-29T15:11:40","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T05:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=144936"},"modified":"2024-10-29T15:11:41","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T05:11:41","slug":"abandoning-bass-strait-oil-and-gas-structures-would-breach-international-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=144936","title":{"rendered":"Abandoning Bass Strait oil and gas structures would breach international law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An international law expert has warned abandoning oil and gas infrastructure in Bass Strait would breach Australia\u2019s obligations under international law, if ExxonMobil<\/a> pursues this plan in decommissioning its Gippsland offshore project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof Donald Rothwell, who specialises in international law at the Australian National University, said Bass Strait was used for international navigation and had special status under the UN convention on the law of the sea (Unclos) and related International Maritime Organisation (IMO) guidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a party to the convention, Australia was obliged to remove all structures from Bass Strait when they were no longer in use, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unclos and related IMO guidelines were \u201cunambiguously clear\u201d, Rothwell said: structures in an international strait within Australia\u2019s exclusive economic zone couldn\u2019t be left \u201cin situ\u201d. \u201cThere\u2019s actually an obligation to remove those structures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When decommissioning its 50-year-old fossil fuel infrastructure in\u00a0the Gippsland basin<\/a>, located up to 77 km off Victoria\u2019s Gippsland coast, ExxonMobil proposed to leave steel structures below depths of 55m \u201cin place on the seabed\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a\u00a0September update<\/a>, the company said lower sections of steel structures in deep water would remain, with removal \u201cpart of a future decommissioning campaign, unless an alternative end state is proposed and accepted by the regulator\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (Nopsema, the environment, health and safety regulator for offshore facilities) said full removal was \u201cthe base case for decommissioning\u201d unless it was satisfied that environmental risks and impacts could be reduced \u201cto as low as reasonably practicable and an acceptable level\u201d in an accepted environment plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ExxonMobil plans to submit its plan<\/a> in early 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Separate approval would be required from the federal environment department under the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act to abandon any infrastructure on the seabed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a novel issue that hasn\u2019t arisen legally in Australia before,\u201d Rothwell said. He added that the government was well aware of the importance of the UN convention, as well as Australia\u2019s rights and obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in this interesting position at the moment where the prime minister, the defence minister and the foreign minister constantly reference the law of the sea convention in many different settings, mostly in the context of disputations in the South China Sea and the freedom of navigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the situation raised questions about whether the government would uphold its own obligations under the convention in relation to the offshore oil and gas industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wilderness Society sought Rothwell\u2019s legal opinion after ExxonMobil publicly stated its intention to resubmit plans to leave steel structures in the ocean to Nopsema and the federal environment department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wilderness Society campaigner Fern Cadman said Rothwell\u2019s advice demonstrated a clear requirement under international law for the government and its offshore regulator to insist on full removal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNopsema needs to crack the whip on ExxonMobil to avoid a scenario where the company no longer has financial capacity for clean up and taxpayers are left meeting Australia\u2019s legal requirement and footing the bill,\u201d Cadman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the next 30 years as projects reach their end of life, an estimated 5.7m tonnes of material \u2013 equivalent to 110 Sydney Harbour bridges \u2013 needs to be removed from Australian offshore oil and gas facilities, according to the Centre of Decommissioning Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Australia\u2019s first major offshore oil and gas development, the Gippsland basin was among the first and largest to face decommissioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ExxonMobil\u2019s wholly owned subsidiary Esso Australia operated and managed the Bass Strait assets in the Gippsland basin on behalf of the company\u2019s joint ventures with Woodside Energy<\/a> and Mitsui E&P Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia must insist on full removal when ExxonMobil decommissions offshore gas project, Wilderness Society says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":144937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,999,35],"tags":[14173,14171,10051,14172,8],"class_list":["post-144936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-australia-politics","category-breaking-news","tag-bass-strait","tag-exxonmobil","tag-gippsland","tag-imo","tag-victoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144940,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144936\/revisions\/144940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/144937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}