The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) is calling for a comprehensive clean-up of disused offshore infrastructure on the Australian coast to be funded by multinational oil and gas companies that put these installations in the country’s waters.
The Union’s Assistant National Secretary Mich-Elle Myers is advocating for the removal of disused equipment from the seafloor and restoration of the marine landscape to its original state. In her statement, Myers points out that oil and gas companies need to comply with their decommissioning commitments for the sake of the environment and future generations.
Myers highlighted: “The comprehensive decommissioning of old, disused oil and gas infrastructure on our seafloor is non-negotiable. Not only is it what these multinational oil companies signed up for when they built them, but we owe it to future generations not to abandon these massive installations in our pristine coastal environment.”
“Big oil and gas companies will not get away with this lie that abandoning their offshore extraction infrastructure on the seafloor is somehow a positive outcome for the environment. The essential trade-off of generating their massive, billion dollar profits from offshore oil and gas is that these companies must restore our coastal environments to the condition they found them when they moved in.”
In a report, launched last October to urge the Australian government to fill the gaps in the existing legal framework regarding offshore installations and develop an efficient decommissioning policy, the MUA also accused oil and gas companies of trying to avoid their legal and ethical obligations by deliberately abandoning offshore equipment and ignoring procedures.