Plan to dump eight toxic oil platforms off Gippsland
Friends of the Earth Media Release
Threat from mercury, lead & radioactive waste pollution
A multinational fossil fuel company has applied to the federal government to dump the majority of eight offshore oil platforms into Bass Strait close to the Gippsland coast in Victoria.
Esso, which is owned by Woodside and ExxonMobil, wants to remove the topsides of the platforms before cutting the massive pylons, or jackets, and dumping them into the ocean.
The eight facilities are among 13 that need to be decommissioned in coming years.
They have been found to contain high levels of asbestos, mercury, lead and other heavy metals, as well as thousands of tonnes of hazardous radioactive waste, technically enhanced and worsened in the extraction process*.
Esso says that they will be creating so-called artificial reefs, but the level of toxins and radioactivity in the resulting sea life is likely to be high, given recent studies.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) is calling on the government to immediately reject the application, and to force the company to safely and responsibly remove all of the steel and other recyclable materials from the facilities.
Friends of the Earth Offshore Fossil Gas campaigner Jeff Waters says Esso is being deceptive, because it’s “rigs to reef” scheme is nothing but an attempt to save money.
“Esso has to rent a European decommissioning ship, so they are rushing to complete the Bass Strait decommissioning in one season,” Jeff Waters said.
“If they were to be forced to recycle the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of perfectly good steel, they’d need to hire such a ship over several years.”
“Esso’s toxic fish factory has to be stopped.”
“They’re using scientific studies that they paid for to justify turning the ocean off Gippsland into a toxic dump,” Waters said.
”Those retired oil platforms contain huge amounts of mercury and hazardous radioactive waste, which will poison the areas around them and render the sea life too dangerous to consume.”
“It’s also a waste of perfectly good steel that could be recycled and turned into much-needed wind turbine towers and bases.”
Friends of the Earth is also calling on the Victorian government to intervene.
“The state government needs steel to build wind turbine towers and bases,” Jeff Waters said.
“The state government should be picking up the phone to their federal colleagues today and demanding that this steel be recycled.
Friends of the Earth is calling on the government to extend the existing temporary decommissioning levy to force the oil and methane industry to pay for world-standard onshore breaking and recycling facilities.
FoE has also launched a new website and petition that can be signed at RecycleTheRigs.org
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17 comments
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John C -
Liz -
Pete Petrass -
Roswell -
Katie -
GL -
corvusboreus -
Roswell -
leefe -
Phil Pryor -
Canguro -
Andrew Smith -
corvusboreus -
Terence Mills -
Harry Lime -
Fred Engels -
Liam
Return to home pageFurther proof, if any was needed, of just how much lack of interest big business in the oil and gas sector has in taking care of the environment they have already poisoned and now they want to increase their profit margin by dumping their toxic wrecks right where they have siphoned our country’s riches out from under our noses for decades with our government’s consent! What a country we live in!
Dump toxic waste into the pristine Bass Strait? No bloody way! Tell Esso t/as Woodside and ExxonMobil to go to hell and dump toxic waste in their OWN frigging backyard! So typical of these predatory American corporate polluters to have such a condescending contempt and disrespect for Australians and our beautiful natural environment! What these type of unconscionable foreign-owned environmental vandals need to learn – real fast – is that Australia and Australians won’t stand for some depraved American-owned corporate predator to use OUR nation as a dumping ground! You can betcha bottom dollar they would NEVER EVER pollute their OWN environment in the way they are happy to dump shit in Australia!
Australians now need to do the right thing and BOYCOTT each and every product pushed out by the environmental wrecking ball known as Woodside and ExxonMobil. Clearly, they don’t give a rat’s arse about Australia, Australians, the environment or ANYTHING but their OWN bottom line in making an obscene profit at the expense of OUR fragile environment! Our nation does NOT need to deal with such a disreputable global polluter – go elsewhere!
They certainly make enough profits to be able to afford the cleanup of their own mess, and it is their mess they crreated. Dumping in our oceans should never be an option.
They wouldn’t dare, would they?
The government, I mean.
If the federal Labor party decide to go ahead with this stupid, reckless decision to allow Esso to dump toxic material into the magnificent pristine Bass Strait, then they will deserve to lose the next election! Anyone who cares a damn about our environment and the Antarctic should now make the sensible decision to dump Labor in favour of the Greens because the megalomaniacal polluters in the LNP are no better!
I for one will NEVER EVER vote for any political regime willing to sacrifice our unique and rare environment in order to satisfy the insatiable greed of some disreputable avaricious American-owned corporate predator’s despicable plan to dump unlimited quantities of toxic material into the pristine waters of Bass Strait! What the hell are they thinking? Once this special area of our beautiful environment becomes polluted, it will take decades – if ever – to recover! And what will happen to that environment and the unique wildlife that inhabit the area of Bass Strait, in the meantime? The fact that Bass Strait is right opposite the unique, magnificent environment of the Antarctic – inhabited by rare penguins, magnificent whales and other rare species of wildlife – is also of GREAT concern because, there is no doubt, that the large tides of the Southern Ocean will carry this vile, toxic matter further south to pollute the Antarctic. Shame on the despicable, prosperity-driven environmental vandals who believe that reckless decision will, in any way, benefit Australia or Australians! FFS, wake up!
Roswell,
Which speaks louder, for any major political party, the people or the money from corporations and the big end of town?
Not sure how much this has to do with the subject article, but it’s interesting;
GL, I’m convinced that money wins, even for the current govt.
Never thought I’d ever say that. I thought Labor were better.
But maybe I’m jumping too soon. We’ll soon know.
Oh, artifical reefs, I thought at first. Neat. Great for the fish and invertebrates.
And then the details – radioactive, asbestos, heavy metals … nah, eff off with that.
Money, and all its forms and alternatives in any way, over time, has been the aim of the greedy, ambtious, self fixated, power hungry anti social, uncivilised savages who dominate as ever. Money, the numbers, the big hordes and totals, means palaces, parliaments, popery, patronage, pleasures, pussy, political supremacy, press oppression, posturing, penetralia, POWER, and we, probably you, certainly me, can go and get picked and plucked. ALL our finances are intermixed, superannuation, accounts, investments, funds, government reserves, etc., are all compromised with oil, gas, metals, weapons, pollutionisitic punctured embarrassing facts of life. As for the future, it is finite, clouded, compromised, threatened, because of US, and that means the rich, greedy, uncaring worst of US. Australia, among many places, must have been lovely until the last wave of nematodal people came here.
Fact: Fossil fuel industries don’t give a flying fuck about our environment, we’re just collateral to their monolithic onslaught against Gaia. God weeps in heaven at the stupidity of the hominid bipeds who’ve evolved on this sacred orb, and alien visitors telepathically endeavour to warn us of the consequences of our ignorance and the damage that ensues from our ravaging of our gifted nest amid the vastness of the universe. Will we learn in time, in order to avoid the necessary costs of our behaviour? I’m not confident, no siree, not at all.
Noooo…. everyone knows the real offshore and onshore environmental hygiene issues are refugees, borders, NOM, immigrants and population growth?
More evidence of the long game strategies played by fossil fuels and their enablers, active and passive, where they are not obliged to scrap (often state subsidised) infrastructure at the end of its working life; bit like dumping old car in the nearest beach or river?
Indeed Andrew,
The fact that Woodside/Exxon are lobbying the federal government for permission to dump their oil derrick pylons in situ completely negates human population growth (which has more than doubled in the last 1/2 century) as a significant contributing factor in local or global environmental decline.
After all, the sixth global mass extinction event we are witnessing, which earth scientists are officially calling the onset of the Anthropocene age, is such a small and simple problem that it can be easily reduced to singularly exclusive either/or causative factors.
General question; if 8 billion humans currently comprise around 34% of overall mammalian biomass, what percentage would 10 billion people comprise?
https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
My understanding is that first Woodside/Exxon will have to carry out a Decommissioning Environment Plan which will then be considered by the federal minister.
The proposed decommissioning “end states” for steel piled jacket platforms in the Bass Strait may differ from the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 requirement for complete removal of all property. Whilst the operators might like to dump it in the ocean and create artificial reefs the government are unlikely to permit this.
“Australia’s international obligations, primarily under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 1996 Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter,
1972, (the London Protocol), to remove disused installations and structures and to preserve and protect the marine environment.”
https://www.nopta.gov.au/_documents/guidelines/decommissioning-guideline.pdf
Nah,it’s all good….just think of all the tax they don’t pay’.It’s way past time to pull the rug out from under these planet destroying vandals.If Labor haven’t got the balls who is going to?…The Greens? The Teals? Mother Earth ain’t gonna wait.One of my youngest grand daughters turns 15 today..how do I explain this to her?
This should not be allowed to happen.
There should be a primary and secondary school campaign to have the children have a say.
And you know what they will say don’t you?
These companies are killing the environment and hence our generational children.
LABOR SAY NO!
Esso has to rent a European decommissioning ship, so they are rushing to complete the Bass Strait decommissioning in one season,” Jeff Waters said.
Finally showing their colours as utter cheapskates. I still do not understand why government lets these companies walk all over them. Either they clean it up properly, or the taxpayer does, and Esso are banned, permanently from any future extractive business in this state.
Those international trade agreements have it all wrong. It is investor’s profits that should be garnished by a court to clean up the messes they leave behind.