Oil Drilling Off Australia To Resume Despite Objections

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32078, 28 August 1969, Page 15

Oil Drilling Off Australia To Resume Despite Objections

fN.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent;

SYDNEY, August 27. In spite of the bitter objections of scientists and conservationists, oil drilling will be resumed near the Great Barrier Reef later this year.

Ampol Petroleum, which has a farm-out agreement with the Japanese Petroleum Exploration Company, Ltd, has lodged notice of intention to drill. The AmpoMapex rig is expected to begin boring into the seabed off the coast 600 miles north of Brisbane towards the end of October. Oilmen say that precautions to guard against a blowout during drilling are so strict they do not even think about possible threats to the reef.

The opponents of drilling, who base most of their objections on the blowout at Santa Barbara, California, earlier this year, say there should be no more drilling until science masters the obvious dangers.

Little Option There is little the Queensland Government could do to

stop tbe drilling even if it wanted to. In recent years the Government has issued 16 permits to various companies to search for oil off the Queensland coast, all of them specifying that exploration must be carried out

Five wells have already been drilled, without incident and without striking oil, and under the terms of its agreements with the oil companies the Government has little option but to allow drilling to proceed. To do otherwise would involve costly litigation or compensation. Delegates at the State Liberal Party conference at the week-end endorsed their Government's action on oil drilling in reef waters but also expressed concern about the possible danger to the reef. Opposed by Gorton The Prime Minister (Mr Gorton) aroused antagonism when he said during the conference that he was per-

sonally opposed to oil drilling on the reef and believed the reef should be left the way it is. But he took the Federal Government out of the controversy when he added that Commonwealth powers over the reef were fairly limited, particularly in a case of a lease granted or taken before the question of some Commonwealth control, outside the three-mile limit, arose. Without wishing to interfere with State rights, Mr Gorton said, he would do whatever he could to see that no risk whatever was taken that might pollute or disturb the reef, or upset, its ecology. The Deputy Premier of Queensland, and Parliamentary Liberal Leader (Mr G. W. Chalk) said that if the Prime Minister considered the risk to the reef was too great the Commonwealth would have to pay the cost of Queensland’s repudiation of drilling rights. Mr Chalk said that after the Santa Barbara blowout,

which polluted the Californian coast, Queensland had considered cancellation or deferment of authorities to prospect. But it was obvious the companies had certain legal rights, and legal advice to the Government was that it would pay heavily if it repudiated the leases. Stung by criticism of its oil drilling policy the Queensland Government has laid down stringent safeguards aimed at preventing oil spillage during drilling of the Ampol-Japex well. There have also been reports that a fulltime inspector may be placed aboard the oil rig. This has - not placated conservationists who maintain there is no infallible means of ensuring a blowout does not occur. The Ampol-Japex well is to be sunk 16 miles from the nearest tourist islands of Brampton and Lindeman. The drilling will be more

than 65 miles from the inner fringe of the Outer Barrier Reef.