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

I rise today to address the issue of the ongoing saga of the oil spill in the Timor Sea from the Montara platform. This oil spill raises a number of questions and has a number of impacts. For a start there is the issue about how it happened in the first place. Of course, we still do not know that. I will come back to that in a minute. It brings to light the regulatory processes and how this accident occurred: what regulatory processes were in place and did the company stick to them or implement them? That is one area. The other area which is of very significant concern is the environmental impact of the spill and the impact on the fisheries in the area. It also highlights the effectiveness or not of our national oil spill response plan and its coordination.

At the moment there are a number of agencies involved in this oil spill. At the federal level there is AMSA—the Australian Maritime Safety Authority; the Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts; the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism under the auspices of Minister Ferguson; and the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. At a state level in WA you have the Department of Environment and Conservation, the Department of Fisheries; and of course you have the Northern Territory resources department, which is the body under the delegated arrangements under the Offshore Petroleum Act that gives them a regulatory and decision-making authority. So you have at least seven authorities that have some level of responsibility for managing this spill. There is not one person you can go to to find out about this spill. If you want to know about the monitoring that is going on—and I will come back to that—you are told to ask the federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. But then they say, ‘But you also have to talk to the WA Department of Environment and Conservation.’ If you want to know about fisheries, you have to talk to AFMA or the WA Department of Fisheries. If you want to know, for example, what the dispersant is, at one stage you had to go and talk to the Sydney Ports Corporation. Who would have thought that you would have to go to the Sydney Ports Corporation to find out what dispersant was being used in the Timor Sea for this spill?

Right from the start there was a lack of information and a lack of adequate updates to the community. We were told that the spill was a certain size. At one stage it was 30 metres by 15 kilometres. The next update was slightly bigger. There were days when the community was not updated as to the size of this spill. In fact, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, AMSA, did not update their website until the day after I flew up and said, ‘No, in fact the spill is much bigger than had been first notified to the public.’ AMSA updated their website about the size of the spill and then 24 hours later they updated it again and the spill had suddenly doubled.

There is no adequate provision of information about how much oil is actually spilling into the marine environment. There was not, for at least two weeks, any adequate provision of information about the amount of oil that was leaking into the environment. Based on the company’s own figures in terms of what they expected to be producing from this well field—this well is actually not an exploration well; it is a well nearing production, a capped production well—the expected flow rates from those wells and similar wells was 3,000 to 9,000 barrels per day. The estimate that we were using was 3,000 barrels of oil produced per day. The company has now finally come out and said that they think it is about 400 barrels a day. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no data on which to base that 400 barrels per day figure. It bears no relationship to any information that they have put on their website. There is nothing in their production materials that says that that is a likely figure to be flowing from this well.

Of course, we do not know what has caused the accident—whether there has been a crack in the well head or whether in fact, as some people have suggested to me, the concrete that lines the well may be leaking. For the company to make an assessment of the amount of oil that is leaking into the environment they obviously need to know what went wrong with the well, which of course we would all like to know. The fact is that there is a significant amount of oil that has been leaking out for nearly 3½ weeks into the Timor Sea around 250 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia. That leak is expected to be going on for the next at least three to 3½ weeks, until the company can, with the West Triton rig, attempt to intercept and stop the flow.

When the leak occurred we also had representatives of the federal government saying on national television the first weekend after it happened: ‘You don’t need to worry. This is relatively small. It’s not going to impact on marine environment.’ Of course, it is. The main body of the spill is now covering 25 by 70 nautical miles. I say ‘main body’ of the spill, because oil is also a sheen in the marine environment for a considerable way south, east and west of what is termed the main body of the slick. If you look at the satellite photos that are available on SkyTruth, it shows that the spill and the sheen are in fact much bigger than that. The government, through AMSA, says that that in fact is an inaccurate reading from the satellite photos. But the satellite photos that have gone up showing satellite data over a number of days do show the spill getting bigger and do show it stretching a significant way further than AMSA says. Whether that is the interpretation of what is the main body of the spill, I am not sure.

There are significant issues around the environmental impacts of this spill—both the oil and the dispersant. The fact is that as soon as this spill occurred, the oil was obviously going to have a detrimental impact on the marine environment, as were the dispersants. Dispersants are not biologically inert. In fact, they can have an adverse impact on the environment. We are particularly concerned about the impact that the dispersants will have on the marine species, bearing in mind that listed in the company’s own environment plan are 12 endangered and threatened species. Five species of marine turtles use the area, including some that are endangered and threatened, including the flatback green turtle and the loggerhead turtle. And obviously humpback whales use the area extensively. Fishers have reported the detrimental impact of both the dispersants and the oil on marine species. They have seen sick turtles and in fact have collected a dead sea snake.

The issue here is that dispersant may be having a detrimental impact on the marine environment but we do not know, because at this stage there is no monitoring going on. There is no monitoring of the impacts that the dispersal of the oil is having on the marine environment. There is no monitoring of whether in fact the dispersant is staying in the first five or 10 metres of the water column, which is what the authorities believe is happening. At the moment, I understand that there is still no agreement on long-term monitoring. At this stage, there is not a clear understanding of whether the company is prepared for long-term monitoring of the impact of the oil and the dispersant on the marine environment.

One of the issues that is also being raised is to do with what part of the spill is now being misdiagnosed as coral spawn. Just recently, there was coral spawn supposedly sighted some way from the spill. The point is that corals in Western Australia do not spawn at this time of year. Their main spawning time is in April or March, with a secondary spawning around late October or November. The issue is whether that is coral spawn or not. It is very early if it is. With the corals about to spawn in October-November, what impact will the spill have? What impact is the dispersant going to have? What impact is the oil spill going to have?

This is part of a valuable line fishery. I understand that the particular species fished there include the red emperor, gold band snapper, cods and coral trout. The red emperor is one of the particularly valuable species up there and will be spawning in October-November as well. The concern is what impact this spill and the dispersant will have on that spawning episode and who is monitoring it. As I said, there is no monitoring going on. There is no monitoring of the areas that are separated from the main body of the spill. There is no monitoring as to whether what has been seen is oil or coral spawn. No-one has sampled those—other than the fishers; the fishers have taken some samples—so we do not know.

We know that the dispersant affects plankton, for example. An effective monitoring should have been put in place a couple of weeks ago so that we can measure the short-, medium- and long-term effects. We need to assess the abundance of species in the area, the health of those species and the impacts that both the oil and the dispersant are having on the larvae of the various species that are spawning at the moment. We also need to assess the impacts on the megafauna that are traditionally associated with that area, such as the humpback, the turtle species and the sea snake species.

I am deeply concerned that the review that the government is putting in place will be a very narrow review and will only look at resource management and whether the regulatory process was effective. Assessing that regulatory process is obviously very important. But is our national oil response plan up to date? Does it need reviewing? Was it implemented effectively. AMSA claim that within four hours of the spill occurring they were notified and had made phone calls within 15 minutes. In the media, it was very strongly reported that planes were not going to be onsite until more than 24 hours later. It is all very well to make phone calls within 15 minutes, but you need to get planes in place and take action. You can be as informed as much as you like, but if you are not actually taking action then that is a significant issue.

I mentioned earlier that there is a lack of a single point to go to for information. You get shuffled around. I have had three different responses to the question that I asked last week about who is responsible for monitoring the impact of this spill on the marine environment. I have had three clarifications of the answer. But I still have not seen the wildlife response plan. I was told last Monday—10 days ago—that a preliminary response plan had been developed and that a further one was being developed. I have asked for that repeatedly for the last 10 days. I still have not seen it. There is still no overall monitoring plan. There is still no plan for the monitoring of the effects of this spill and the dispersant on the marine environment and those marine species. That is still not in place. It has been 3½ weeks since this accident happened. Nobody has been monitoring it; nobody has been taking samples—that is what I have been told. There is no monitoring plan, either for the short, medium or long term, in place. That is not good enough. There is not one place that you can go to to find the information.

The AMSA website has been slow updating information on the spill. It has become a little bit better since some complaints were received about the slowness of the release of information. You have to go to a number of different departments to find out what the situation is regarding the spill. I do not think that is adequate. There has been a downplaying of the potential impact of this oil spill. It is now the third biggest in Australian history, as I understand it, and it is going to get bigger because this is going to go for another 3½ weeks.

It is important that we have a review of whether the regulatory procedures in place were adequate. But we also need to make sure that we essentially do a 360 degree review of all the aspects to do with this spill. What were the environmental impacts? Have we responded quickly enough? Could other things have been done or put in place? How effective were the responses? It is all very well to look at the regulated responses under the Offshore Petroleum Act and whether they were adequate, but we also need to look at whether the marine plan was adequate. The responses could have been to the letter of the marine plan, but the response plan might not have been adequate, so we need to review that. (Time expired)