Oil pollution visible from Exmouth, WA, to Queensland
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Flying fish frightened by our cruise ship emerge from the muck, their fins/wings leaving odd zig-zag trails across the stained water to where they plop back into it, probably blinded by the chemicals. It’s sickening to think what must be happening to the marine life in Australia’s once pristine northern waters now polluted over vast areas stretching from Exmouth in Western Australia to Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria. And where are the birds? I did not see any sea birds from Exmouth until we reached the Gulf waters, as meanwhile over three days my camera recorded the pollution — slicks stretching to the horizon.
Is it all from the 10-week Montana oil rig leak finally plugged on November 2 or 3, days after a massive fire broke out on the PTTEP Australasia rig, 690 kilometres west of Darwin in the Timor Sea? Or are there more leaks that we are never told about? As Dawn Princess cruised up the WA coast at a steady 19 knots, I was amazed to see how many oil rigs are out there. PTTEP claimed the well lost about 400 barrels a day (for 10 weeks) but some observers have estimated a flow up to 2000 barrels a day. And now we have toxic oil pollution visible over thousands of square kilometres of the Indian Ocean, Timor Sea and Arafura Sea. The federal government has promised us a full and independent inquiry, but the damage is done. And nothing can guarantee it will not happen again. Cyclones sweep through this vast area every year. A recent report in Crikey complained that the media had largely ignored or downplayed this horrifying event. I am from Adelaide, where The Advertiser demonstrated this with its report that the rig had caught alight — three paragraphs buried deep in the newspaper. Pathetic. Apathetic. The cruise ship is circumnavigating Australia, having left Melbourne on November 18. We are due to dock in Brisbane on Tuesday. |
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9 Comments
Hi there,
The implications of aforementioned oil leaks do concern me, and i haven’t great first-hand experience of oil slicks, but the pics above do look rather like ‘natural’ events that can often be seen in warm waters in summer months. Trichodesmium blooms (heck, my marine bio is getting rusty… cyanobacteria?? wikipedia has exonerated me..) can form blooms and be concentrated in ‘slicks’ like pictured, with this characteristic colour, but unlike oil, a sweep with a plankton net should show it’s composed of small filaments. coral spawn at times may give a similar result, but my bets are on the tricho. I would suspect oil (even greatly dispersed) would have more of an oily/rainbowy/mucky/mirrory appearance??
I appreciated the take that Crikey delivers on the world’s issues, I’d hate for someone else to pick a fault and make a scene about this
You may well be correct, but many a person has mistaken a tricho slick for something worse, even I in my ignorant youth!
SHANE L - If what’s in view is not oil, where did the 4000 barrels of oil go? Out further? Did it sink? Where are the birds then? Gone away for a holiday break? Home for chrissy perhaps? As Bruce says, these were once pristine waters, and he didn’t see one bird.
I’m with you Bruce, I think it’s a national disgrace. Anyone who’s seen birds covered in oil can only wonder and weep - I do! They die an awful death - and as you correctly point out, what else do they injest? It’s just horrific! Thank you for showing us what’s happening. The mainstream media have conveniently lost their collective voices. Shame on them!
I think the lack of coverage for this story pretty much sums up Australia’s thoughts and feeligns on environmental issues. Ignore them, they will cost our beloved mining companies too much. Pathetic and disgusting, this country is going down the toilet fast.
I would think that Shane L is quite correct, theses blooms are a common place event in tropical waters; in any case the winds at this time of the year are from the South east meaning any oil spills are moving westward away from the Montana spill which was NW of Darwin. As for unreported spills, you have to be kidding, you can’t keep that sort a thing a secret.
I agree with Shane L - this pics may be a natural phenomenon. I have fished in northern waters in the past and flown over a lot of the seas in the NW. That ‘rusty’ bloom on the water is quite common. However, I would also say that the release of oil product onto the waters up there is a bloody disgrace and the govt must apply some severe penalties.
I very much hope this is a natural phenomenon as suggested by some. I’ve been to Exmouth and it makes me feel ill to think such a beautiful environment could be jeopardised - no matter how valuable oil is as an export. Particularly with the Great Barrier Reef under threat, let’s look after the Ningaloo. Please keep us posted on this story.
Many moons ago I used to work in the “oil patch” as a “gravel picker” (geologist). Back then we didn’t call them “leaks”. What happened on the Montana well we called a “blow out”. I was there when Panarctic Oil’s King Christian No.1 onshore well blew out in the Canadian Arctic. The gas blow-out which caught fire took three months to plug, during which time an est. 50 million cu.ft. of gas a day burned into the atmosphere in the form of a large 150 foot high torch (all non-metric then).
What happens in oil production is fundamentally not all that different to a blow-out, except that the former is controlled. I suspect that the “swiss cheese” theory applied to aircraft disasters can also be applied to drilling for oil. A number of things need to go wrong simultaneously to overcome the many safety measures in place, mercifully this is rare. That doesn’t make the ecological consequences any less horrific, nor excuse the operators. Definitely an enquiry should be held, and its principal aim should be to learn as much as possible about what happened to help prevent such from happening again. Also let’s learn as much as possible as to how best to ameliorate the damage.
Meanwhile if we all start using less hydrocarbons -such as by lugging water half way accross the country in plastic bottles because tap water doesn’t taste so nice- the need for drilling in these pristine waters wouldn’t be so great.
In the case of the Montana rig, I do wonder, would the ecological damage have been greater or less had the well caught fire at the beginning?
Shane L, I’d also say you are correct on all counts. Certainly you know more of what you are talking about than Mr Hogben.
As for “are there more leaks that we are never told about?”; indeed there are, however they’re natural. Natural oil seeps are the single biggest contributor of petroleum to the world’s oceans. Of course, they’ve been doing their thing for millions of years, which is why certain microbes have had time to evolve to exploit this niche.
Which brings me to @Liz45, on ‘where did the Montara oil go’; the most likely answer is that most of it has been eaten ‘by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth’, as I predicted <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/02/whats-big-slick-and-floating-towards-the-wa-coast/#comment-36534"here.
@Mr Anderson — I was going to comment along the same lines. Crikey’s coverage would comprise more than half of what I’ve seen about this event, from all sources … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b8hSp-SBaY … Redneck Wonderland