Sea Dumping Bill just kicking the problem down the road?
With the amendment to the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981, brings Australia laws in line with international laws as part of the London Protocol. Sea dumping is the deliberate disposal of wastes or other matter from vessels, aircraft, platforms or man-made structures into the sea. It does not include material released directly into the sea from a land source or operational discharges from ships. The London Protocol sets up a framework which prohibited sea dumping and which required parties to apply for a special permit for approved materials to be dumped.
Will
facilitate the expansion of gas projects, and as a result increase in seismic
testing in Australian waters. Sleipner and Snohvit structures operating in
Norway, are the most studied geological structures. They have had over 30 years
of countless seismic acquisition or seismic blasting operations just to study
and monitor those two carbon capture and storage fields.
The
Environmental Minister, Tanya Plibersek would allow grant permits to enable CO2
captured during industrial processes to be stored under the seabed in another
country’s waters. The legislation will also other countries waste to be stored
under the seabed in Australian waters.
Santos is
looking at a project for CO2 storage part of their Barossa Offshore Gas
Project, in Darwin, which proposes the establishment of carbon capture storage
(CCS) facility in depleted Bayu-Undan gas reservoir off Timor-Leste.
The
legislation will allow big gas companies to claim an emission credit whilst
exporting those emissions to another country’s waters. The government and the
big gas companies are arguing that CCS can help to reduce our carbon dioxide
CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, this is performed by directly removing
CO2 from the atmosphere and store it permanently deep underground.
In 2021, 5
sites in Western Australia and Northern Territory have been identified that
contain huge storage capacity for CO2. There will likely be many more sites in
Victoria that could be identified in the future for storage given the gas
fields already in existence or have been decommissioned in the state already.
CSS is
considered a safe technology by supporters, but already studies have shown that
the technology brings with it, huge environmental risks such as leakage,
groundwater contamination, pipeline incidents, and health risks to humans.
CSS has not
worked anywhere, including in Australia, it is an expensive failure, requires a
new power plant to run the system so is resource intensive, and CSS actually
puts more CO2 into the atmosphere then it removes
This bill
allows the gas companies to reduce the cost to decommission gas fields and to
gain credit for the carbon dioxide the gas fields produce and then export the
waste to be stored under another country’s seabed. But, think of it in reverse. This allows the
gas companies to export the waste here to be stored in Australian waters that
were produced in another country. The government has said this will help
protect climate change and help Australia reach net-zero, but what studies have
been done to ensure that the carbon dioxide storage is not kicking this
football down the road to be a future generation’s problem?
Written by Tim Hawthorne
References:
https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/energy/resources/carbon-capture-and-storage-ccs
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2021/07/20/top-5-reasons-carbon-capture-and-storage-ccs-is-bogus/