The Wire

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 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 per cent of the trajectories modelled, oil levels that were high enough to require the closure of fisheries, reached the entrance to Spencers Gulf and 80 per cent of trajectories reached Kangaroo Island. In some of the scenarios modelled, oil reached Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand.