The Sydney Environmental Institute at the University of Sydney convened an independent group of oil and gas industry specialists with backgrounds in science, law and academia to examine Equinor’s plan in detail and make a special submission to NOPSEMA.

The group found: “Throughout its Environment Plan (EP) the operator, Equinor, has consistently made optimistic choices in order to convince the public and NOPSEMA that “it is safe” to drill Stromlo-1.”

Read the report in full here.

Of particular note the submission cites:

• A failure to consult Indigenous organisations.

• A failure to consult with groups deemed outside an arbitrarily declared impact zone - a 40km radius around the Stromlo-1 well which is almost 400km off the coast in the middle of the Southern Ocean – despite their own spill modelling showing thousands of kilometres of Australian coastline potentially affected.

Of particular note the submission cites:

• A failure to adequately consider safeguards for the 41 listed threatened species found in the Bight.

• A failure to quantify the “human, technological and financial resources” that would be needed to conduct an oil spill clean-up in the Bight.

The climate crisis is not a forecast – its impacts are real, present and devastating. Communities and nature are both facing extinction and this includes our oceans.

In September 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered the Special Report on the Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. It reinforced the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit the scale of changes to the oceans.

If we are to protect our oceans and marine life and ensure a liveable future for all, we must transition from fossil fuels. Equinor’s plans for the Great Australian Bight are too risky and threaten Australian coastal communities, economies, livelihoods and our marine environment.

Changes in climate such as warming, acidification, oxygen loss etc are already disrupting marine species and ecosystems. These impacts extend to the communities who depend on them.

So far, the ocean has adopted more than 90% of the additional heat in the climate system and this is reducing the supply of oxygen and nutrients for marine life.

Since 1982, there has been a doubling in marine heatwaves. If emissions continue to increase at current rates, warming events will be 50 times more prevalent.

Coastal communities that rely on seafood as part of their dietary requirements, may face risks to nutritional health and food security if fish populations continue to decline.

“Cutting greenhouse gas emissions will limit impacts on ocean ecosystems that provide us with food, support our health and shape our cultures,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II. “Reducing other pressures such as pollution will further help marine life deal with changes in their environment, while enabling a more resilient ocean”.

In May this year, a delegation from the Great Australian Bight Alliance travelled to Norway to take the fight to Equinor’s doorstep. Patagonia ambassador and Bight local Heath Joske led a paddle out protest in Oslo and addressed the Annual General Meeting of Equinor.

Anna Taylor is a mother of two who lives outside Elliston with her partner, Tim Jones. The family’s small acreage is an oasis of life amongst the dry and stony sheep paddocks that surround it. It’s hardscrabble country down here in the Bight, yet Anna and Tim have grown this from scratch and it flourishes in one of the harshest environments on the Australian continent.

Heath Joske discusses the issues with drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight, its risks on the coastline of Southern Australia and why it is important to stand for it for our future.

"To go this deep in an area that hasn't been touched before, with the potential for such broad consequences all along Southern Australia- it's a definite line in the sand"

Friday 6th December 2002. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I was standing with three friends at the top of a cliff near Mundaka, one of the world’s most iconic surf spots. We watched in horror as a gigantic black stain advanced its way towards the coast. Minutes later, the waves started dumping millions of blobs of crude oil onto the shoreline. In the space of a few hours, the beautiful coastline of yellow sand had turned into a stinking carpet of black, sticky tar

There’s a thing about Australian surfing that’s more or less timeless. No matter the decade, nor the town nor the reason, a film night pulls together the faithful in defiance of the old observation that getting surfers to turn up to anything is more or less like herding cats

Good news can be hard to find. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Good people doing good work can also be hard to hear about. They are often too busy doing the work to be out beating their chests about it and demanding attention. There are a lot of uplifting stories and inspiring people living on the edge of this big brown land who deserve a tip of the hat and much more support

The Great Australian Bight has always been considered too wild and too deep to even consider drilling for oil out there. They’d be drilling in waters two kilometres deep, then drilling two kilometres into the seabed, in some of the wildest ocean on earth. What could go wrong? It would be cavalier and breathtakingly irresponsible. There are no oil rigs in The Bight for good reason