Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Siewert today relating to the Montara oil spill in the Timor Sea.

For a start, Minister Wong said the size of the spill was now 20 nautical miles by 70 nautical miles. I understood from the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Minister Garrett, that the size is 25 nautical miles by 70 nautical miles, so I am going to seek clarification on that. But, if it is in fact 25 by 70 nautical miles, that equates to nearly 6,000 square kilometres. That is bigger than the city of Perth, so we are talking about a significant area.

Also, I would like to point out that that is the area of the main body of the slick. It does not take into account those areas of oil that have moved away from the main body of the slick. Minister Wong also said that Minister Garrett had made a flight over the area. As of yesterday morning, that had not been reported in the media nor, when I last checked, on his website.

I also asked for details about the amount of oil that is entering into the environment per day. This is a very important question because this spill is going to go on, according to the company, for eight weeks. That is a significant amount of oil that is going to be entering the environment. The company, to date, has said very little about anything to do with this accident and oil spill. The company keeps refusing to say how much oil per day is entering the marine environment. So I was extremely interested to hear Minister Garrett, over the weekend, say that the figure is between 300 and 400 barrels per day. To my knowledge that is the first time that anybody has actually said how much oil is entering the environment.

According to the company’s own figures, that area would be producing between 3,000 and 9,000 barrels of oil per day. If you take the very conservative figure for that well—3,000 barrels per day, which is similar to other wells in that area—that is nearly half a million litres of oil entering the marine environment. We have been desperate to obtain the calculation from the company, from the government, from AMSA or from the Sydney Ports Corporation, who also apparently have an involvement in coordinating the cleanup of this spill. We have been desperate to find out how much oil is entering the marine environment and how much is expected to enter over the next eight weeks. To date we have not been told. That is why it is so important that the minister for the environment, if he has figures, explains his reference to 300 to 400 barrels per day—explains how he came by those figures because they are not published anywhere.

This brings me to the next point about trying to obtain information about this spill. In the days after it first happened, we were told the spill was about 30 kilometres by 15 kilometres. Then we were told it was 30 by 30 kilometres. It was not until the day after I flew over the site that the Minister for Resources, Minister Ferguson, came out and said that the size of the spill was around 15 nautical miles by 60 nautical miles, which is just under 3,000 square kilometres. The next day there was an update by AMSA on their website to say that it was 20, and then later 25, by 70 nautical miles which is getting close to 6,000 square kilometres.

You can understand why people are very concerned about (a) the size of the slick increasing and (b) what impact this is going to have on the marine environment. The company’s own environment plan lists 12 endangered and threatened species, including the whaleshark, the Christmas Island frigate bird, the humpback whale, the flat-backed turtle, the hawk’s bill turtle, the loggerhead turtle, the green turtle, the specific Ridley turtle, Abbott’s booby and the blue whale. As you can tell from that list, these are all very important species and of course that list does not mention all the other species that use the area such as seawitch and seafans and the other marine biodiversity in it, including sea snakes, sea squirts, lace coral and soft coral. All these are located there. As I said, you can understand why I believe people are justifiably concerned. I would like to hear Minister Garrett’s report of his flight over the area and what impact he thinks it is having. We are now starting to get reports from fishers in the area who are identifying the effects on turtles and sea snakes in the area. Like the general public, the fishers have had a hard time finding out information about the extent of the spill, the exclusion zone and what dispersants have been used. It was not until a number of days down the track that we could actually find out from the authorities what dispersant was being used. I understand it is called Slickgone. We do not know what impact that is having on the marine environment. Minister Wong articulated in her response that the government is finally putting in place a wildlife response plan—and this accident happened three weeks ago. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.