Big Oil Big Bight
BP’s proposal to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight is shrouded in secrecy. Their application to the offshore oil industry regulator NOPSEMA is contains detailed information about the likely impacts of an oil spill and about the companies contingency plans to mitigate the effects of a spill on the environment. The problem that many environmental groups have cited as a major flaw in the assessment process for this project is the lack of transparency.
After a concerted campaign to have the details of BP’s oil spill modelling released to the public, the Wilderness Society of South Australia raised the money to pay for independent modelling from a top level oceanographer, Laurent Lebreton. He models a vast number of oil spills scenarios based on weather patters and prevailing currents in the Great Australian Bight over the past 20 years.
The result showed that in 100% of the trajectories modelled, oil levels that were high enough to require the closure of fisheries, reached the entrance to Spencers Gulf and 80% of trajectories reached Kangaroo Island. In some of the scenarios modelled, oil reached Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand.
Detail of the oil spill map created by Oceanographer Laurent Lebreton of Dumpark, NZ.
Dr Thomas Azwell, Environmental Scientist, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley.