Guidelines for petroleum industry consultation with AFMA
1. Purpose
The Australian petroleum industry’s offshore activities such as exploration, seismic surveys,
drilling, pipeline and sub-sea infrastructure construction and oil and gas production, share the
oceans with other users, such as the commercial fishing industry. An appropriate level of
consultation with other ocean users, including the fishing industry, is a legal requirement of
the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Act 2009, as administered by the National
Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) and
forms an important part of preparing an Environment Plan and Oil Spill Contingency Plan.
The purpose of these Guidelines is to provide advice on AFMA’s preferred process for
consultation and information provision about petroleum offshore activities.
2. Introduction
AFMA is the Commonwealth agency responsible for management of commercial fisheries in
Commonwealth waters. In general, this means AFMA manages fishing activities from three
nautical miles to the extent of the Australian Fishing Zone (AFZ) at 200 nautical miles, while
the State agencies and the Northern Territory look after recreational and commercial coastal
fishing and aquaculture.
However Offshore Constitutional Settlement (OCS) arrangements between the
Commonwealth and the States can complicate the picture. Fisheries in OCS arrangements are
defined in terms of species, fishing method and area. For example, the Northern Prawn
(trawl) Fishery off the North West and North Coast of Australia is managed to low water
mark by AFMA through OCS arrangements with the WA, NT and Qld governments. This
means that petroleum operators must check management arrangements for fisheries of
interest, as multiple jurisdictions may be responsible for managing these fisheries.
3. Consultation requirements
In being consulted about petroleum activities in Commonwealth waters, AFMA has two main
objectives.
1. AFMA aims to ensure that any broad-scale impacts of offshore petroleum industry
development on commercial fishing in Commonwealth waters are considered in decision
making by the Department of Resources Energy and Tourism (DRET). AFMA does this by
providing comment to DRET on annual acreage releases prior to their release (this
information is then made available to operators as part of the release area notices) and also by
providing comment to petroleum companies on large scale proposals (e.g. pipelines) which
might have a significant impact on a fishery.
2. AFMA aims to ensure that petroleum operators consult with fishing operators in
Commonwealth-managed fisheries about fishing activities when preparing Environment
Plans and Oil Spill Contingency Plans. See Section 5 below for information on consultation
with fishing operators.
3.1. Consultation criteria
As established in the offshore petroleum legislation, the level of consultation required is
directly related to the type and scale of the activity and subsequent likelihood of impact on
fishing. AFMA wants to be consulted about activities which might have impacts at a large
scale (e.g. pipelines).
Activity type

Economic sustainability of a fishery, amongst other things, broadly depends on access to
fishery areas, the use of particular fishing gear, and of course, fish. Impacts on fishing can
therefore be through direct impacts on fish species and fish habitat (e.g. infrastructure
construction effect on reef substrate which may impact fish breeding), but can also be
indirectly through impacts on data collection for science (e.g. impacts on long term
surveys used to build fish population models that underpin management). Any activity
type which could cause spatial or temporal disturbance to fishing or scientific activities
should be the subject of consultation.
Scale of activity

AFMA expects the petroleum industry to consult with fishing operators about all
activities. This is because the spatial distribution and intensity of fishing operations can
be highly variable over time and the only way to reliably determine future activity is by
consulting relevant fishing operators. It should be noted that even if there has been low or
no activity this does not mean that there will be none in the future e.g. fisheries can have
“stock re-building strategies” which might include closing the fisheries for periods of
time.
3.2. Consultation engagement
AFMA expects all petroleum industry consultation should involve direct consultation with
fishing operators and associations.
In order for AFMA to assess impact of major proposals, clear maps of locations of proposed
developments (in latitude and longitude in datum WGS 19841) and associated petroleum title
references should be emailed to AFMA via petroleum@afma.gov.au. If there is any doubt
about the need for consultation AFMA can be contacted via email on
petroleum@afma.gov.au.
Where activities which AFMA does not consider to be major proposals are received, AFMA
will consider these to be notifications and will not necessarily respond.
4. Information and advice
4.1. How to find out what fishery a proposed activity occurs in
Both Petroleum Title and Commonwealth Fisheries boundaries are publicly available
information which can be located on the Australian Marine Spatial Information System
1
Degrees, minutes and decimal seconds
(AMSIS) website. If these two maps are overlain on each other it is possible to find out which
Fisheries overlap with a petroleum title. A set of instructions to assist with this can be
downloaded as a PDF here.
4.2. More detailed information about fisheries
More detailed information about management of each Commonwealth Fishery can be found
at:
 Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) website:
http://www.afma.gov.au/managing-our-fisheries/fisheries-a-to-z-index/

Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)
website. Fishery Status Reports are produced annually and include catch information,
maps of fishing intensity, comments about methods, ports, species etc. for each
Commonwealth fishery. These can be accessed at:
http://daff.gov.au/abares/publications_remote_content/publication_series/fishery_stat
us_report
Links to State Fisheries websites can be found at:
 State Fisheries links (http://www.afma.gov.au/resource-centre/links/#state)
4.3. A special advisory – the Australian Indonesian Memorandum of Understanding
If a petroleum activity occurs in the region of the 1974 Australian Indonesian Memorandum
of Understanding (this boundary is also included on the AMSIS website), which allows
traditional Indonesian fishing activities, the following advice may be relevant to risk
assessments.
 Traditional fishers can be found in any part of the MoU Box and in adjacent
Australian water where they may stray from time to time.
 Traditional vessels are only sail powered and therefore unable to readily take evasive
action to avoid collision.
 Few vessels carry navigational lights and they do not carry radar reflectors as general
practice. The hulls are timber and present poor radar targets.
 While peak activity for fishers is outside of the cyclone season some fishing is done
throughout the year.
5. Consulting fishing operators
AFMA expects petroleum operators to consult directly with fishing operators about all
activities and projects which may affect day to day fishing activities. AFMA provides webbased information to petroleum operators to facilitate this.
AFMA has a Fishing Consultation Directory of contacts for fishing industry associations in
each Fishery (where they exist).
In some fisheries there are no associations other than the Commonwealth Fisheries
Association. Some fishing industry associations (e.g. SETFIA) are developing fee for service
models to identify fishing industry issues and liaise with the fishing sector.
It is important that AFMA is able to provide current contact information to ensure that people
who need to be consulted can be contacted. So if you become aware that any of the contact
details in the Fishing Consultation Directory needs updating please contact
petroleum@afma.gov.au
Another option for petroleum operators is to access the names and addresses of individual
Commonwealth Statutory Fishing Rights, Fishing Permit and High Seas Permit holders from
the Public Register, which can be obtained by contacting AFMA Licensing on 1300 723 621.