Our campaign forces a Parliamentary Inquiry! Friends of the Earth Melbourne has had a HUGE win, with the announcement of a Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the clean up of huge, toxic, rotting oil and gas infrastructure sitting in Bass Strait. This year we uncovered the fact ExxonMobile and Woodside want to dump thousands of tonnes of polluted but recyclable steel in Bass Strait.
They then want to take more than a dozen multi-storey “topsides” and about 60,000 tonnes of other polluted waste to a breaking yard they want to build on the shoreline in the middle of the Ramsar-listed Corner Inlet Wetland Site. Doing all that in one summer rather than conducting the campaign responsibly and taking ALL of the steel to an alternative brownfield site in Geelong, will save Exxon hundreds of millions of dollars.
The topsides and other waste are riddled with asbestos, hundreds of tonnes of hazardous radioactive material, mercury and other heavy metals, and various types of poisonous hydrocarbons. An accident in Corner Inlet would be catastrophic.
Then there are the 400 “abandoned” oil and gas wells. A recent university study found at least 25% of them will be leaking methane.
The Parliamentary inquiry will shine a bright torch into the darkest corners of the issue. It’s extremely important because Bass Strait is the first major decommissioning project in Australia for what is a $70 billion emerging problem. Whatever happens in Bass Strait will set an important Australian precedent.
But, in the end, it is Federal ministers who will decides what happens. A Victorian Inquiry will help the process, but we need to continue our lobbying campaign, and growing our grass roots community, to influence decision making in Canberra.
How can you help? Sign our petition
