PEP-11 made Sky News Opinion piece, first piece of real counter-narrative iv seen.

'Human sadness' a toll to measure the viability of oil and gas in Australia

We can now add another, arguably more significant toll to measure the viability of mining oil and gas in Australia: Human sadness, writes Fred Pawle.

Fred PawleJournalist

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A new cost has been discovered by which to measure the viability of mining oil and gas in Australia.

On top of the actual cost of physically extracting the minerals from the ground, and the exorbitant expenses involved in both preventing accidents and financially preparing for the fines and compensation payouts that are imposed should one happen anyway, we can now add another, arguably more significant toll: Human sadness.

This was one of a raft of assertions from Damien Cole, Australia's leading offshore oil and gas exploration opponent, in the Newcastle Herald last week.

Referring to an application from Australian company Asset Energy to extend its permit to explore in an area known as PEP11 (4600 square kilometres, starting 10-30km offshore, between Newcastle and Manly Beach, Sydney), Mr Cole told the newspaper: "Local communities in NSW have been impacted by catastrophes over the last couple of years, starting with the bushfires up to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

"As we slowly recover from the ongoing lockdown, an oil spill or gas leak could further decimate local economies, irreparably damage the local marine and coastal ecosystems, destroy the habitat of countless species including the endangered Manly colony of Little Penguins, and negatively impact the physical and mental health of millions of Australians within these communities."

In Mr Cole's mind, the most significant consequence of oil and gas mining is not to produce the fuel that enables, among other things, him to fly around the country organising protests against oil and gas, but the catastrophic spills that will destroy economies and make people sad.

Independent federal MP Zali Steggall, whose Warringah electorate on the Northern Beaches of Sydney is adjacent to the southern tip of the permit area, has proposed a private members' bill that would ban exploration in PEP11.

She has three Liberal backbench supporters: Lucy Wicks, Jason Falinski and Dave Sharma. All three represent relatively wealthy electorates on the beaches of Sydney and the Central Coast, south of Newcastle. They are potentially vulnerable at the forthcoming election to independents running, as Steggall did against Tony Abbott in Warringah in 2019, on radical environmental policies that appease the guilty consciences of voters who drive large SUVs and live in multi-storey homes.

Ms Wicks says the Prime Minister is with her, saying in April: "Under the Morrison Government, PEP11 will not go ahead".

Resources Minister Keith Pitt, who could renew Asset Energy's permit any time he likes, isn't quite so resolute. He told Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National in August: "I'll make a decision that is based on facts, based on the advice from the regulator, in this case NOPTA (National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator). I am the decision maker in this matter, and I'll make that decision in due course."

The extension of the permit would not mean Asset Energy could immediately start drilling. It would still need to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops, including the approval of a complex environmental plan, which could take months.

One of the key motifs of the protest is that a drilling rig would blight the view from some of the most expensive coastal real estate in the country. The #StopPEP11 feed on Instagram features repeated images of a giant rig on the horizon off Sydney's Northern Beaches.

This isn't true. Asset Energy is searching for gas, not oil, specifically in a place that is over the horizon, and therefore invisible, from Newcastle. It has publicly declared it is not interested in the parts of the permit area off Sydney.

Should its rig find gas, it would only be in place for a few months, after which a pipeline would be laid to pump the fuel ashore. The gas is needed to fire up the new Kurri Kurri gas power plant in the nearby Hunter Valley, one of the key components of the federal government's transition to cleaner energy.

And unlike oil, a gas leak is impossible to detect from the shore. In the unlikely event of a leak, the nearby residents' mental health would be blissfully untroubled by it.

But none of that registers with the privileged NIMBY protesters of the Northern Beaches and Central Coast.

This is a repeat of the Equinor debate of 2019. Equinor, a Norwegian company with extensive experience mining oil and gas in the North Sea, applied for a permit to explore for oil under the seabed 370km offshore in the Great Australian Bight.

Surfers along Australia's entire southern coast, led by Mr Cole, embarked on a deceptive campaign that claimed a spill from the rig would cause an oil slick stretching from Esperance in Western Australia to Port Macquarie in NSW and encircling Tasmania. It would have been about 10 times the size of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Naturally, environmentalists were horrified.

What Mr Cole neglected to emphasise during that campaign was that he lives and surfs at Torquay, Victoria, about 1000km from Equinor's proposed drill site and only 300km from the Bass Strait oil and gas field, where mining companies had been operating safely for decades.

Equinor was on track to have its application to drill approved. Its environmental plan passed the independent National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority in December 2019.

But the hysterical response from coastal communities who were convinced their beaches and fishing industries were going to be drenched in massive oil slicks prevailed.

A significant aspect of surf culture in Australia is the custodianship surfers claim over their local beaches. This localism bordered on xenophobia as Equinor was unequivocally told at most protest meetings throughout 2019 to get out of the country.

Eventually, it did. Despite having cleared onerous environmental hurdles and having tried to ingratiate itself to the coastal communities, Equinor announced two months later it would abandon the project, citing economic reasons. Locals rejoiced.

The irony is that surfboards and wetsuits are made from oil byproducts. And the planes and cars that surfers routinely use to find good-quality surf are also, of course, fueled by the oil industry.

The hypocrisy of campaigning against an industry on which they fundamentally rely did not occur to the thousands of surfers who passionately opposed Equinor.

It would be too much to expect them to realise that same hypocrisy is being repeated now that a local company, Asset Energy, has become the new Equinor.

The protest is supported by former world champions Tom Carroll and Layne Beachley, who were prominent in 2019 as well. They are joined now by another former pro surfer, Adrian Buchan, who lives in Wicks' electorate of Robertson on the Central Coast.

All three were conspicuously less opposed to the oil industry when their careers depended on it.

At a protest in Terrigal in February attended by Opposition leader Anthony Albanese, Buchan was adamant: "Let's hope that we can kick these projects out of our backyard once and forever."

The Equinor debate occurred partly during the 2019 election. Virtually no Coalition politicians were brave enough to back Equinor, despite its proposed project being a much-needed boost for the South Australian economy.

The Government might not have the same luxury during the forthcoming federal election. Gas is a key element of its own energy policy. To oppose drilling for it because it would make the residents of wealthy coastal electorates sad might save three marginal seats but cost the Government dearly elsewhere.