They Know the Drill

It doesn’t matter how much information you share with environmentalists, their conclusions are the same: fossil fuel miners are destroying the planet. By Fred Pawle.

Knowledge is power, said Sir Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism, way back in the 16th century. Clearly, Sir Francis never met a 21st century environmentalist.

The case of two recent applications to explore for fossil fuels off the southern coast of Australia illustrates that to some people knowledge is not so much power as it is proof that humanity is evil and the apocalypse is nigh. Or something like that. Environmentalist logic is difficult to follow at the best of times.

One of these applications you will have heard of: Norwegian company Equinor’s application to look for oil nearly 400km off the beach in the Great Australian Bight.

Rather than keep its intentions secret from the public, Equinor released its environmental plan a month before it submitted its application to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority. It also met about 130 community organisations and invited submissions in an attempt to reassure all interested parties that there was little to worry about the proposal.

Among the submissions it received were offensive photographs and messages from environmental opponents telling the company it was not welcome round these parts. It also became the subject of a widespread protest, led by surfers 1000km from the proposed well site in Torquay, Victoria, that wilfully misrepresented information from the environmental plan and claimed the well would, in the event of an accident, cause a spill 10 times bigger than the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the biggest in history.

These opponents ignored Equinor’s safety record, the existence of similar wells elsewhere in the world and the punitive costs of cleaning up a spill, built into exploration licences, which companies naturally do all they can to avoid.

The other application, from ExxonMobil, to drill a site only 400km from Torquay, made no such gesture to share knowledge with the public, and therefore flew under the radar. Last Wednesday, NOPSEMA approved ExxonMobil’s application.

It is fair to say that Equinor’s executives must be wondering why they bothered being so magnanimous with their environmental plan and holding all those public meetings. (Not that they would have any choice in the matter now - in April the Federal Government's legislation to force mining applicants to publish their environmental plans in advance came into effect, so expect repeats of this misinformation campaign whenever a mining proposal falls foul of the environmental lobby.)

Although mining applications are assessed individually, Equinor can be heartened by the ExxonMobil approval for a couple of reasons. Its site is in a similar depth of water, about 2300m, and while ExxonMobil is looking for for gas not oil, its proposal must nevertheless include precautions for an oil spill in case any is struck.

But the fight is far from over. The leader of the protest movement against Equinor, Torquay surfer Damein Cole, isn’t giving up. Cole ran as an independent in his electorate of Corangamite last month and his exaggerated claims about the threat posed by the exploratory drill in the bight became a major issue in the campaign. He was arguably the key factor in the seat swinging from Liberal to Labor.

Immediately after the election, Cole took off for a surfing holiday in Bali. This week he unfortunately received a minor skull fracture while surfing and is laid up in hospital after undergoing emergency surgery. In a video posted from his hospital bed in Bali on Friday, he explained that he forgot to take out travel insurance and thanked the people who had, via gofundme, sent money to help pay for his expenses.

He then reminded his followers that his enthusiasm for environmental sanctimony remained undimmed. He was eager to return home and resume “fighting the good fight. 

“You fossil fuel companies, look out, because I’m coming for you,” he said, waving a finger at the camera. “Any of you pricks who are bloody trying to destroy our environment, I’m coming for you too.”

While we at the MRC wish Cole a speedy (and cheap) recovery, we can’t help but be amused by a person who neglects to take out insurance for a holiday in a developing country lecturing a multinational oil-mining company about risk assessment.