Victoria Approves Offshore Gas Drilling Less Than 5Km From World-Famous 12 Apostles

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The Victorian government has given consent for a gas company to produce gas extracted from beneath a national park in the state’s south-west, near the celebrated tourist site the Twelve Apostles. Documents tabled in Victorian parliament earlier this month show Lily D’Ambrosio, the state energy and climate change minister, gave consent for an existing exploration gas well underneath the Port Campbell national park to be developed into a production well.

The South Australian oil and gas company Beach Energy has had permission to explore for gas just outside the national park in south-west Victoria since May 2019. The onshore drill site is 450m outside the park, but the bore extends 3.5km out into the ocean, including a 1.3km stretch passing underneath the national park. The company’s work at the site became public in June this year when the federal Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources released maps showing areas that had previously been opened to exploration and extraction. The maps revealed the drill site was roughly 5km from the Twelve Apostles and the Great Ocean Road.

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As the project involved drilling beneath a national park, it required D’Ambrosio’s consent before the state agency Earth Resources Regulation could give final approval. The consent signed by D’Ambrosio says no work can be conducted within the national park. It says the operation is “located on modified freehold land that is considered sufficiently remote enough from any National Parks Act area”. The Victorian Greens deputy leader, Ellen Sandell, said state support for fossil fuel expansion was “bonkers”, particularly in the wake of a landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that confirmed greenhouse gas emissions from human activity was unequivocally changing the Earth’s climate in ways “unprecedented” for thousands of years.

She said no one would visit the Twelve Apostles “if it’s surrounded by gas drilling rigs”. “The risks are very profound for our climate. We know that burning any more gas is contributing to more fires, more floods,” she said. “There’s also risks to the marine environment – this is an area that is a migratory path for humpback whales and the southern wright whale.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/16/victoria-consents-to-gas-production-from-well-near-twelve-apostles