The proposal from Shell to explore for gas within 50-60 kilometres of Ningaloo Reef Marine Park has led to calls from major environment groups and the Greens for the project to be banned. However, oil and gas exploration is already permitted in other Commonwealth Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and will likely be included in a massive increase in MPAs championed by the University of Queensland and the Pew Environment Group.
For most Australians, the idea of marine national parks was born with declaration of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park along a vast area of the Queensland coast to protect it from oil exploration and drilling in the early 1980s. This deal was negotiated between the Hawke government and the legendary Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the-then Premier of Queensland. The deal banned oil and gas exploration outright but initially banned recreational and commercial fishing in very small reference areas and had widespread support.
With considerable funding generating extensive tourism facilities, it became Australia’s premier tourist attraction. Over time the idea of what marine parks are designed to protect has changed. Recent MPAs in Commonwealth and state waters, existing and proposed, have come the full circle, targeting fishing but exempting seismic testing — despite its potential impact to marine life and with little or no funding for tourism.
In November last year, a report was issued calling for MPAs to be established in Commonwealth waters across vast areas from Kangaroo Island in South Australia across the south-west and up to Geralton in Western Australia. This report was prepared by researchers from the University of Queensland for the Pew Environment Group. The Pew Environment Group has a unique agenda and close links to the Oil Industry.
Many Commonwealth MPAs already inlcude oil exploration. Around the time of consultation for the establishment of the south-east MPAs in 2001-02 there was a submission to an inquiry in to MPAs from the Australian Association of Maritime Affairs, referencing other research from Pew. It “adapted” the International Union for Conservation and Nature (IUCN) protection categories for land-based national parks for Marine Protected Areas.
For the south-east MPAs this submission was more or less adopted. The then first proposed Commonwealth MPA zones can allow oil and gas exploration in zones VI, but more recently there were amendments for all zones to allow “transit mining”.
Transit mining is: “Mining — as defined in s 355 of the act — activities include oil and gas exploration and extraction, as well as geosequestration of carbon. Seismic survey and transit is allowed under general approval from the Director of National Parks. Conditions apply to the approval. Other mining activities are permitted in Multiple Use and Special Purpose Zones on a case by case assessment. Contact the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts for more information.”
In 2009 Andrew Macintosh and Tim Bonyhady Australian Centre for Environmental Law Australian National University published a report Commonwealth Marine Protected Areas Displaced Activities Analysis. This report identifies that mining rights have remained strong while fishing rights are weak in Commonwealth waters.
In affect, this means that any new Commonwealth MPAs will be able to exclude fishing and pay little or no compensation. However, if mining is excluded, the compensation will be considerable. Declaring vast additional areas of the sea MPAs will likely only be possible if oil and gas exploration is maintained.
It seems that the idea of what MPAs are meant to protect the marine environment from has reversed since the declaration of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. This is even more curious given the recent oil spills from the Montara well of north-west Australia in 2009 and in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
Lionel Eelmore needs to be very careful about the blurring of the facts here. The drilling is 50 km from the edge of the marine park and 75 km from the reef itself.
As well, the related links – to GULF OF MEXICO OIL SPILL, MARINE CONSERVATION, MARINE PARKS, MONTARA OIL SPILL, OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION, OIL DRILLING – are almost all misleading, because the company is only drilling for gas.
Anyone who comments on such matters needs to get their facts straight or it merely gives the anti-environmentalists more ammunition to attack the environmental movement. This article would have been much more legitimate if the first paragraph had been omitted – by blurring the facts at the start the validity of the rest is called into question.
Successive governments have demostrated through their policies that energy security in Australia has primacy over marine conservation objectives. If this policy position persists then there will always be a difference between the nature of access rights granted to petroleum and gas exploration relative to other uses.
Fishing rights in Commonwealth waters may be weak relative to mining rights (I am not sufficiently familiar with the legislation to comment one way or the other), however they are much stronger than those granted in many State jurisdictions. The Commonwealth fisheries legislation at least establishes a regime of statutory fishing rights and clearly prescribes how those rights may be amended or revoked. The establishment of such rights provides a mechanism for fishers to seek compensation if they can demonstrate that their access rights have been diminished by the establishment of a MPA. To date however MPA’s declared in Commonwealth waters have been defined so as to exclude the majority of the most productive fishing grounds and thereby minimise the economic impacts on commercial fishing (and the compensation bill to the taxpayer).
Given that MPA’s also permit petroleum and gas exploration one must ask what benefit these areas actually generate relative to the cost of their establishment? Have we simply ending up ‘closing’ areas that in reality have never been nor will ever be utilised commercially and therefore provide little or no environmental benefit over what would have existed without them?
Surely the question of what we want to achieve from marine protected areas needs to be answered before we decide where they should be and what activities, if any, are allowed within them?
Brief answer to headline question: yes, but not cheaply enough to satisfy both profit seekers & end users.