Sitting off Australia's coast are scores of rusting fossil gas and oil rigs, hundreds of wells and thousands of kilometres of pipeline, all of which need to be retired over coming years.
In addition, 2600 platforms, amounting to 7.5 million tonnes of steel, will need to be decommissioned across the Indo-Pacific region over the next decade.
Help us to urge the Federal Government to seize this opportunity to transform offshore gas and oil rig decommissioning in Australia by forming a new industry that will create thousands of direct and indirect jobs.
The growing number of redundant gas and oil assets off the WA coast would be towed or shipped to a large onshore facility to be cleaned and scrapped, with the steel and other products recycled.
The new facility would be paid for by an extension to the existing offshore decommissioning levy, and any profits would be granted to the area’s Traditional Owners, the Kariyarra people.
An ARRC, funded by this federal, industry-wide levy, would ensure oil and gas firms now enjoying extraordinary financial windfalls would pay, themselves, for the clean-up of drilling sites, rather than writing decommissioning off on tax, at the expense of the Australian population as happens now.
#RecycleTheRigs
Jeff Waters
Offshore Gas Campaigner
TO:
The Hon Madeleine King MP, Minister for Resources
The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Minister for Environment and Water
The Hon Chris Bowen MP, Minister for Climate Change and Energy
Dear Minsters,
We call on you to support the building of an industry-funded Australian Rig Recycling Centre (ARRC) in Port Hedland, Western Australia.
An Australian Rig Recycling Centre in the Pilbara would:
- Create a new industry in the Pilbara, with associated flow-on benefits to small businesses and the community
- Create hundreds of ongoing jobs
- Safely dispose of legacy offshore fossil fuel assets now off WA, in Bass Strait and the entire Indo-Pacific region in a sustainable manner
- Prevent the dumping of such assets in unsafe, exploitative, and polluting maritime wrecking sites in South Asia
- Provide ongoing income for housing, health, education and employment for Kariyarra Traditional Owners.
Friends of the Earth Australia and our supporters strongly urge the Australian government to conduct a business and feasibility study for the ARRC, and to extend the Offshore Petroleum (Laminaria and Corallina Decommissioning Cost Recovery) Levy so as to fund it.
The ongoing levy could then be used to finance the cutting free and relocation of offshore assets off Australia and across the Indo-Pacific for processing.
It is a visionary plan that will bring great benefits to Australia and will establish the Pilbara as a world-leading servicing region for the offshore oil and gas industry.