Dear Australian MPs and policy makers,

The offshore oil and gas industry has more than $60 billion in ocean clean up looming. Much of this infrastructure is coming due to be cleaned up now, and the rest will need to be removed over the coming decades. This clean up is also known as ‘restoration’ or ‘decommissioning’. 

Yet there are troubling signs offshore fossil fuel companies are doing everything possible to cut and run from legal clean up obligations.

Here are four reasons delayed and avoided decommissioning is a big problem:

1. The marine environment suffers. Australia's sublime oceans are being put at risk by vast volumes of steel, concrete and other materials, including heavy materials, chemicals and radioactive substances. When this infrastructure is poorly maintained and left in place beyond its use-by date, there is a high risk it will fail. Old and decaying infrastructure can cause leaks, spills and contamination of the ocean.  

2. Workers are forced to work on decaying and dangerous infrastructure that puts their safety at risk. In recent years there have been several near fatalities of workers on infrastructure that should have been removed years ago.

3. Australia misses the huge opportunity to recycle valuable resources and create jobs for offshore oil and gas workers as the extraction side of the offshore oil and gas industry winds up and is replaced by removing and recycling vast quantities of materials.

4. The Australian government and Australian taxpayer risks being left to clean up and pay for the oil and gas industry’s mess if it’s not done while these companies are profitable. This is exactly what happened when Woodside sold the Northern Endeavour for a dollar to the Northern Oil and Gas Australia group of companies, which promptly went broke.

As an Australian politician and policy maker, you must step in now, to protect the marine environment and workers from the oil and gas industry’s attempts to dump and abandon infrastructure. 

I’m calling for:

1. Immediate introduction of bonds for all oil and gas companies to ensure sufficient money is held by a third party to pay for full clean up and removal of all infrastructure if the company doesn’t do it. Bonds already exist for much of the mining sector in Australia and the onshore gas industry in Victoria. It’s a giant policy black hole that clean up bonds don’t exist for offshore oil and gas and one that needs to be addressed urgently. 

2. Extend the current oil and gas clean up levy. This levy was introduced onto oil and gas companies when the owners of the Northern Endeavour went bankrupt. It currently recoups the costs the Australian government is having to pay to clean up the Northern Endeavour mess. The levy should be extended to pay for shared decommissioning infrastructure, a worker training centre and any further northern Endeavour style disasters that occur while the bond system is established.

3. Prosecutions and fines for oil and gas companies that fail to clean up after themselves. Australia’s oil and gas regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority hasn’t prosecuted a single company for failing to undertake decommissioning, despite many companies being years and even decades behind on their legal obligations. This needs to change or companies will continue to shirk their obligations.

4. Tighten financial reporting laws so companies are transparent about the money within their own operations set aside for decommissioning. Right now, oil and gas companies are using dodgy accounting tricks to ‘say’ decommissioning money exists when really it doesn’t.

5. Introduce a moratorium on old infrastructure being left in place for possible future carbon pollution dumping. Companies including Santos and Esso are using reuse arguments to avoid decommissioning, when the potential for reuse is not supported by evidence.

Thank you for acting to ensure oil and gas companies clean up the mess they have created and profited from for decades.