John Gunn
Chief Executive Officer
20 December 2013
Chair of the Taskforce
Offshore Streamlining Taskforce
Department of Industry
GPO Box 1564
CANBERRA ACT 2601
offshoreenvironment@ret.gov.au
Via email and post
Dear Sir/Madam
RE:
1. Streamlining Offshore Petroleum Environmental Approvals - Draft Strategic Assessment Report
2. Streamlining Offshore Petroleum Environmental Approvals – Program Report
3. Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Amendment (2014 Measures
No.1) Regulation 2014 – Exposure Draft (04/12/2013)
4. Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 2009 Exposure
Draft-Explanatory Document
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) welcomes the opportunity provided by the Department
of Industry to make a submission on the Streamlining Offshore Petroleum Environmental Approvals
Strategic Assessment and Program Report and the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage
(Environment) Amendment – Exposure Draft (04/12/2013) and Explanatory Document.
AIMS is Australia’s tropical marine research agency. The Institute is a Publicly-Funded Research Agency
with statutory independence granted by the AIMS Act (1972). It has developed internationally recognised
expertise in the study of factors controlling tropical marine ecosystems, including the design and delivery of
effective tropical marine monitoring programs, ecosystem biodiversity assessments, environmental risk
assessment, and studies of resilience and cumulative impacts of human impacts on marine ecosystems.
AIMS has been working with regulators and industry involved in the offshore oil and gas industry for over
20 years, and was involved in conducting several of the studies associated with the Montara spill1, as well
as reviewing the Monitoring Plan for the Montara Well Release Timor Sea2 . This expertise, together with
specialist infrastructure (dedicated coastal research vessels, state-of-the-art laboratories and controlled
environment aquarium facilities) makes AIMS one of the most appropriately resourced research institutions
in Australia to comment on the environmental implications of offshore petroleum activities.
AIMS has previously made submissions to the environment sections of the Montara Commission of Inquiry
(COI)3, to the Draft Government Response to the Report of the Montara COI4, and a detailed submission to
1http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/oilspill/publications/pubs/2011-shallow-reef-surveys.pdf
http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/oilspill/publications/pubs/2011-offshore-banks-assessment-survey.pdf
2http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/publications/pubs/montara-monitoring-plan.pdf
3http://www.montarainquiry.gov.au/downloads/Australian%20Institute%20of%20Marine%20Science%20(AIMS)%20-
%20submission/SUBM.3000.0001.0001.pdf
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the review of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 20095 in
February 2013. In response to the Streamlining Offshore Petroleum Environmental Approvals
documentation and the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Amendment
(2014 Measures No.1) Regulation 2014 – Exposure Draft (04/12/2013) and Explanatory document AIMS
makes the following comments:
1. Introduction of Offshore Project Proposals (OPP)
We note that the proposed OPP is only mandatory for development projects. In our previous submission to
RET5 we drew attention to the proportionally higher incidence of well failure/blow out during the offshore
oil and gas exploration phase than the production phase:
AIMS wishes to draw the Department’s attention to the SINTEF offshore blow out database, which includes
information on 573 offshore blowouts/well releases that have occurred world-wide since 1955. This data
shows that 80-90% of the blowouts have occurred during the exploration rather than production phase of a
well.
Whilst AIMS recognises that although the exploration drilling phase can be a short term activity, and that
much of this activity is conducted by junior/mid-tier companies that do not have the resources to
undertake major environmental programs, the environmental consequences of exploration well failure are
potentially significant, and could impact on matters of national environmental significance – as defined in
Part three of the EPBC Act 1999.
RECOMMENDATION 1
AIMS recommends that the Task Force consider the inclusion of exploration activities in the requirement
for submission of the Offshore Project Proposals, considering at the minimum, an assessment of potential
impact on matters of national environmental significance.
2. Requirement for submission of environmental data
AIMS notes the comment on p11 of the Exposure Draft - Explanatory document; Amendments not being
pursued section that:
‘Amendments to require the submission of environmental data: This option has policy support from the
department; however it has been determined that legislative amendments will be required to the OPGGS
Act to enable implementation. It can therefore not be achieved in the timeframe for this review’.
Having reviewed the publically available data, AIMS is strongly of the view that there is inadequate baseline
and biological data (particularly in the NW of Western Australia) to satisfy the requirements of the current
OPGGS Act, the EPBC Act and the Program6 and the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage
(Environment) Amendment (2014 Measures No.1) Regulation 2014 – Exposure Draft (04/12/2013). In
particular there are inadequate data to address cumulative impact assessment requirements7 or to provide
4http://www.ret.gov.au/Department/Documents/MIR/4_AIMS.pdf
5http://www.ret.gov.au/resources/upstream_petroleum/op-environment/reviewER2009/Documents/S013-Submission-AIMS.pdf
6
On page 53 of the Draft Strategic Assessment report states that, as described in the Program, Environment Plans and Offshore
Project Proposals must ‘...include details of the environmental impacts and risks for the activity and an evaluation of all the impacts and
risks, including cumulative impacts. This must include an evaluation of all the impacts and risks arising directly or indirectly from all operations
of the activity and potential emergency conditions...’
‘...Cumulative impacts refers to the direct and indirect impacts of a number of different actions or other influences on the
environment which, when considered together, have a greater impact than each action or influence considered individually.
Cumulative impacts may refer to existing or ongoing impacts (e.g. from existing infrastructure in an area). Cumulative impacts also
encompass the predicted cumulative effect of a number of projects proposed for an area (e.g. multiple seismic surveys in a region),
or other predicted long-term trends in the environment (e.g. sea level rise)...’ Draft Strategic Assessment Report page 53.
7
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an adequate description of the receiving environment as a basis for assessment of impacts of uncontrolled
releases when the receiving environment also includes emergency conditions8 . It is worth noting that a
worse-case scenario from a small uncontrolled release would mean a receiving environment of >100,000
km2.
With insufficient data it is difficult to manage risk, to evaluate proposals, and to monitor performance of
individual operators (and the industry as a whole) in the short and especially in the long term.
Essentially, because detailed Environmental Plans (EP) and ecological survey/environmental baseline data
upon which the EP are based, are currently not made publically available, individual titleholders do not
have detailed knowledge of the environmental status and activities in neighbouring leases to determine the
cumulative impacts of the proposed activity nor to comprehensively describe the receiving environment.
We also suggest that associated with changes in access to environmental data, there is a need to improve
the quality of data through increased standardization of sampling protocols and procedures, improved
quality control, and greater attention to requirements for spatial and temporal replication. Collectively this
will allow the aggregation of localised datasets into regional datasets allowing the identification of critical
gaps in our understanding of regional status and trends which will be needed to establish fully
comprehensive environmental baselines and cumulative impacts.
RECOMMENDATION 2
To resolve the data availability and quality issues we suggest that there is a need to develop a set of data
standards for key environmental parameters, and to change the way environmental data are managed.
Appropriate co-ordination, central management of environmental data and release of non-commercially
sensitive data, will in our opinion significantly improve the management of risk and allow a thorough
determination of potential cumulative impacts.
If you require any further detail on any of the matters raised in this document please do not hesitate to
contact AIMS. The AIMS contact officer is Dr Ross Jones, AIMS Perth (r.jones@aims.gov.au).
Yours sincerely
John Gunn
Chief Executive Officer
8
Under the OPGGS Act 2006 the description of the existing environment must be appropriate to the nature and scale of the
activity in that it must capture all aspects of the environment that may be affected under routine and, importantly, under emergency
conditions (Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 2009 Part 2 Division 2.3 Regulation 13
Paragraph 3A (b) ‘ ..potential emergency conditions, whether resulting from accident or any other reason...’.
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