From the Gippsland coast, ageing oil and gas rigs are hidden by the curvature of the Earth. Locals and holiday makers walk the beaches largely oblivious to the immense volume of steel and concrete anchored beyond the horizon. An even greater tonnage of metal crisscrosses the continental shelf in the 840km of pipelines carrying hydrocarbons from subsea facilities to platforms and then shoreward to the Longford Plant for processing. As oil and gas production in the Bass Strait winds down, the future of this infrastructure hangs in the balance. Its owners, ExxonMobil Australia and Woodside (the Joint Venture), are legally obliged to remove it but a clause buried in the guidelines might offer them a way out.

The Southern Ocean from the South Gippsland coast.

The Rigs to Reefs argument:

A pull up banner stands at the door of the Foster War Memorial Hall advertising the ExxonMobil community consultation. Inside, a smattering of locals sit in chairs facing a retractable screen. In the darkened room the projected image is striking. A cluster of colourful sponges clinging to a pipeline, their halo of finfish partially obscured by an ExxonMobil logo. The presentation is saturated with such photographs. A rock lobster on a wellhead. Crabs on a steel pile jacket. Snapper schooling against the silhouette of a rig. This strategy of front loading the conversation with depictions of oil and gas infrastructure as thriving habitat is a successful one. Speaking to attendees after the consultation I repeatedly hear support for leaving the infrastructure in place. One woman tells me that removing the rigs would be a case of environmental vandalism. Unsurprisingly companies like ExxonMobil and Woodside gleefully feed this narrative. Straight facedly they paint their efforts to subvert their legal obligation to clean up as providing a noble environmental service. Considering their lack of concern for the ocean's creatures during the destructive phases of petroleum exploration and extraction, not to mention the decades long climate disinformation campaign perpetrated by ExxonMobil and associates, it is hard not to view these claims of newfound environmental awareness as anything other than cynical greenwashing. 

Public communications from ExxonMobil Australia are often decorated with images of animals on and around pipelines.

The Science.

To make the prospect of in situ abandonment more appealing, companies like to suggest that pipelines are nurseries for target fishery species, or that rigs connect isolated populations across the seascape, or that sponge gardens growing on facilities are rich ecosystems, comparable to those on rocky reefs. To support these claims, the industry cites studies that use commercial ROV footage to count fish and other marine life. In Australia, nearly 90% of this research is funded by the petroleum industry. Despite this conflict of interest, findings often fail to support the industry position. The few papers that do generally offer a false dichotomy, comparing species assemblages on the infrastructure to the surrounding sea floor, two entirely different biomes. One ecologist working for Beach Energy told me during a community consultation “Out there, the seafloor is just mud. Infrastructure provides a home for species that are looking for a place to live”. Hearing such an anthropomorphic characterisation from a scientist was bizarre. The oceanic housing crisis imagined by Beach Energy's ecologist may tug on the heart strings but it is a falsehood. Nature abhors a vacuum. Stand in the ocean long enough and something will grow on you. The muddy floor is its own dynamic ecosystem worthy of protection. Rusting rigs are no substitute for, nor are they supplement to, properly protected natural reefs. If we truly wish to preserve the colourful marine life beloved by so many we must be better custodians of our oceans and our coastlines. That does not involve dumping industrial waste at sea.

Contaminants commonly associated with offshore oil and gas infrastructure (from MacIntosh et al. 2022) 

Hydrocarbon extraction leaves a toxic legacy crusted along pipelines, smeared over steel and heaped in piles of contaminated drilling mud. Naturally occurring radioactive materials, or NORMs, are a byproduct of oil and gas production. Radioactive isotopes become concentrated in a toxic scale that coats the inside of pipelines. These elements may pose a risk to the environment as infrastructure corrodes. The same can be said for other concentrated toxins like arsenic and heavy metals. The science varies in its assessments of long term effects but is united in its call for caution. We do not know what impact these contaminants will have on the ecosystem or the fish we eat. Pipelines may remain intact for another hundred years, but some NORMs have half lives of several centuries. One isotope of radium hangs around for more than a millennium and a half. Allowing industrial waste to decay in the Southern Ocean to unknown effect would be tragically irresponsible. Doing so to protect the profit of polluters like ExxonMobil would be appallingly negligent.

The law:

The legislation is clear: all infrastructure introduced to an area must be removed at the end of production. The guidelines, however, open a loophole the industry is eager to exploit. Abandoning infrastructure in the sea may be permissible if it delivers “equal or better environmental outcomes”. The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environment Management Authority (NOPSEMA), the body established to oversee the offshore petroleum industry and the arbiter of “equal or better” outcomes, provides no yardstick for what these should look like. In consultations with Friends of the Earth Melbourne it has conceded that no criteria exist for making such judgements. 

The regulator has come under fire in recent years for its failure to adequately police the offshore petroleum industry. Rather than proactively maintaining high standards of environmental protection and workplace safety, NOPSEMA has largely been a reactionary force, responding to spills and accidents with weak directives that companies do better. Such toothlessness, in combination with the ambiguity of the guidelines, has left fossil fuel companies feeling confident they will be permitted to dump significant volumes of infrastructure in Australian waters. 

A corroded rig in the Bass Strait. Photo credit: ExxonMobil Australia

This temerity is reflected in the Joint Venture’s plans to delay the removal of non-producing Bass Strait infrastructure, particularly pipelines, to 2035 or beyond. After decades of dealing with servile ministers and an obsequious regulator, the companies are confidently negotiating ‘alternative end states’, an industry euphemism for dumping at sea.

Want to do something about it?

The Victorian Government has recently announced a Parliamentary Inquiry into oil and gas infrastructure decommissioning. Submissions close on the 7th of November. Friends of the Earth Melbourne, the Wilderness Society and the Maritime Union of Australia have published this submission guide and are hosting a webinar about the clean-up on October 23rd. You can RSVP here if you want to come along and learn how to make a strong submission to the Victorian Parliament. 

If online meetings aren't your thing you can use this submission guide that we wrote along with the Wilderness Society and the Maritime Union of Australia. 

Want to know more about oil and gas in the Bass Strait? Check out this timeline of ExxonMobil Australia's poor behaviour in the Southern Ocean.