Santos abandons any intentions to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight
The prospects of anyone drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight in the next decade seem remote with Santos handing back its right to explore for oil in the region.
Santos and Murphy Oil have handed back their right to explore for oil in the Great Australian Bight, a year and a half after Norwegian company Equinor scrapped its $200m drilling plans.
It means the prospects of anyone drilling for oil in The Bight in the next decade are remote, with the only remaining titleholder Bight Petroleum having a variation to its proposed work program knocked back by the federal regulator NOPSEMA in February.
Equinor dropped its plans to drill for oil in The Bight in February last year, saying it was not economically viable. Global oil company BP dropped its own plans to drill in The Bight in 2016, followed by Chevron in 2017.
Both proposed exploration programs were hugely contentious, and Equinor’s plans were the subject of protests across the nation.
Equinor had actually received its final approval to go ahead with drilling from the federal regulator NOPSEMA in the December preceding its decision to pull out, having sunk years of work into the program.
The project was targeting billions of dollars worth of oil, but was strongly opposed by environmental groups who said that drilling in the deep waters of the Great Australian Bight could never be done safely.
Santos and Murphy were in the early stages of their program, and did not even have a scheduled date to drill a well.
The company said on Friday they “have surrendered EPP43 in the Great Australian Bight with good standing after completing the joint venture’s work program obligations’’.
“The Santos strategy is to build and grow around our five core long-life natural gas assets and the Great Australian Bight falls outside these assets,’’ a spokesman said.
“Santos is focused on pursuing disciplined growth across our core assets. This includes our sanctioned Barossa gas project offshore the Northern Territory which will backfill our Darwin LNG project.
“In addition, our Moomba carbon capture and storage project in the Cooper Basin is planned for a final investment decision later this year and the Dorado oil and gas project offshore Western Australia and the Narrabri domestic gas project in New South Wales will both face investment decisions over the next couple of years.’’
Karoon gas surrendered its Great Australian Bight tenement in 2019, with the company’s chairman reported as saying at the time they had “listened to our broader stakeholder groups and have initiated actions to relinquish EPP46 in the Great Australian Bight.”
The Equinor project was touted as potentially delivering $1.7 billion in state and federal taxes each year and creating more than 1300 jobs in South Australia during construction. Drilling would have taken 30-60 days, in waters about 2.5km deep.
It was strongly opposed by environmental groups however and a public consultation process attracted more than 30,000 submissions.
Wilderness Society South Australian Director Peter Owen at the time called for a ban on drilling in The Bight and said it was “clear that drilling The Bight is not a sensible proposition’’.
“Opening up a new high-risk frontier oilfield when we are hurtling towards catastrophic climate change is madness.”
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