Evidence of cover-ups by the Australian government and the company responsible has emerged from testimony and submissions to an official inquiry into last year’s oil and gas spill at the Montara field, off the northern coast of Western Australia. The inquiry’s report is due to be handed today to Resources Minister Martin Ferguson, who has not announced when he will release it.
The Montara leak, which lasted 10 weeks before it was finally plugged, occurred in much shallower waters (about 250 feet deep) than BP’s current Gulf of Mexico blowout (5,000 feet), and produced less than a tenth of the known flow. Its location in the Timor Sea was far more remote, about 250 kilometres off the sparsely populated coastline of the northern Kimberley region, and about 150 km southeast of Ashmore Reef, a marine reserve.
Nevertheless, a number of parallels have become apparent. Both leaks were caused by faulty caps and cementing, and in both cases the companies and governments involved sought to hide the scale and causes of the disaster from public view.
The Montara spill lasted for 74 days, from August 21 to November 3. It took five attempts to plug the leak by drilling a new connection that intercepted the well casing, some 2.6 km below the seabed, and then pumping in mud. Before the fifth attempt succeeded, a three-day fire broke out on the platform, highlighting the danger that had existed for the 65 workers who were evacuated from the rig when the leak originally erupted.
Throughout the blowout, Ferguson and Environment Minister Peter Garrett downplayed the size of the spill and the environmental fallout. They cited the unsubstantiated estimate of the field’s owner, the Thai conglomerate PTTEP (PTT Exploration and Production Public Company Limited), that about 300 to 400 barrels of oil were leaking daily.
Evidence presented to the government’s inquiry, headed by former senior public servant David Borthwick, has revealed a spill of as much as 3,000 barrels a day. The slick is estimated to have extended up to 90,000 square kilometres, or nearly the size of Tasmania—a much larger area than the estimates previously given to the public.
Submissions by the Australian Conservation Foundation and other environmental groups have pointed to damage to offshore and coastal ecosystems that are home to diverse species of sea snakes, birds, fish, turtles, whales, dolphins and dugongs. The long-term harm to the previously unspoiled tropical habitat is still not known, nor the impact on the fishing, pearling and tourism industries.
Although none of the slick drifted to the Australian coast, as once feared possible, some of the oil reached the south coast of Indonesian West Timor. There is documented evidence, in a submission by the West Timor Care Foundation, an Indonesian NGO, of harm to the livelihoods and health of up to 200,000 people in coastal communities, including on the islands of Roti and Sabu. The submission pointed to Montara-sourced oil and lead pollution in the local seawater and among seaweed crops. The levels detected could cause long-term lead poisoning and other health problems.
After the inquiry’s public hearings opened in March, PTTEP revealed that two flaws had caused the spill—a missing containment cap and faulty cementing at the bottom of the well. PTTEP and Atlas, the company it contracted to drill wells, admitted they were aware several weeks before the spill that “the 340mm pressure-containing corrosion cap required by the drilling program had not been installed”.
Witnesses involved in the drilling disclosed that the cementing had not set properly in March last year, and that for six months company executives had known that no validating test was performed. In other words, the two defects had been known for some time before the accident, yet the mining continued.
Other testimony pointed to basic failures by the regulatory authorities. . .
much more. . .
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/dril-j18.shtmlIt is a carbon copy of what is happening now, or rather vice versa. Deepwater Horizon is following Australia's Montara disaster step by step. Even down to the dispersant, they also used Corexit, hundreds of thousands of gallons of it.
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