Nimbies surfing over the facts and trying to wipe out a jobs bonanza

Fear and outrage come so naturally to environmentalists that even an obviously deceptive map of a potential oil spill is enough to mobilise them into a campaign of furious protests and angry, relentless social media commentary.

The map in this instance is a comically scary depiction of what would supposedly happen if Norwegian oil company Equinor’s proposed exploratory well 400km off Ceduna in the Great Australian Bight sprung a leak.

It is based on a diagram in Equinor’s environmental plan depicting all the areas that could be affected by any of 100 different worst-case scenarios.

Greenpeace saw the map and on February 19 tweeted a redrawn version of it with the caption: “BREAKING: Oil giant Equinor has released its so-called ‘Environmental Plan’ for oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight. This map from Equinor’s own prior modelling shows a spill could hit anywhere from SA to NSW.”

Technically correct, but ambiguous, especially to people who are perpetually outraged.

Nick Carroll, a journalist for surf website Coastalwatch, published a story asserting that “a worst-case spill would put oil on every surfable coast of Australia south of 30 degrees S.”

Of course that is not right. It warrants repeating: the map is of all the areas potentially affected by 100 worst-case scenarios, all of them “highly unlikely”, according to Equinor.

But who wants to read the fine print when a protest needs to be organised?

On March 3, hundreds of surfers paddled out at a beach off Torquay in Victoria as a show of defiance against the proposed well 1000km away.

Predictably, the irony of the event was lost on all those involved: surfboards and wetsuits are made from petroleum by-products.

Also, surfers are often veteran travellers, commonly to Indonesia, which would be a slow and difficult journey without aircraft fuelled by oil products.

Surfers who rely on oil drilling for their essential equipment and their travel were gathering to protest against mining for oil in their backyard. In other words: drilling for oil is fine off other people’s beaches, but not theirs.

When the hypocrisy of this was pointed out on the Menzies Research Centre’s website the other day, the responses we received mostly focused instead on conspiracy theories about “big oil” and the need to quickly transition to renewables, which politicians were deliberately obstructing.

So the sanctimonious posturing was magically subsumed by the ever popular condemnation of the greed and incompetence of the rich and powerful.

But it’s not just the decision-makers in the protesters’ sights. It’s workers too. And indeed, those without work but seeking it.

Research last year by economics and policy consultants ACIL Allen for the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association concluded that oil in the Great Australian Bight could produce up to six billion barrels by 2060 and create up to 5000 jobs a year in South Australia.

This activity would increase Australia’s GDP by $6 billion to $19bn every year. It would also give South Australia, which has not yet recovered from the demise of car manufacturing in 2017, the sort of boost Western Australia has received since the start of the resources boom.

​But the surfers who have commandeered pockets of this coastline for the past half a century have appointed themselves custodians, and the benefits that could flow to others from oil mining are, in their minds, easily dismissed.

That fails to explain the protest from 28 famous Australian surfers, including Mick Fanning, Taj Burrow, Steph Gilmore, Layne Beachley and Tom Carroll.

“An oil spill in The Bight would be catastrophic and the southern coastline of Australia would never be the same,” they all agree in an open letter.

Professional surfers go through dozens of surfboards a year and rarely appear wearing a wetsuit that doesn’t look brand new.

They also travel further on planes than most people on the planet. But don’t imagine they should be encouraging and celebrating the exploration for products that have made them rich and famous.

Typically, this outrage and anger is based on an aversion to corporate profits; the protests are acts of defiance against a formidable organisation bent on making nothing but money.

Funnily enough, this is where the protesters and Equinor’s executives should find common ground. Oil spills are expensive. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 cost its owner about $US60bn in fines and clean-up costs.

Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, charged with assessing Equinor’s application, won’t approve plans for the project unless its policies for accident prevention and emergency response are the best possible.

And Equinor is also focused on not wasting its profits, should it strike oil, by having to clean up the adjacent coastline because of negligence. If that means surfboards and air travel remain relatively cheap, then Australian surfers should be delighted.

Fred Pawle is communications director of the Menzies Research Centre.