PEP-11 Media Release, page-64

Another point worth including may be how much the public's perception of the project was intentionally manipulated by the completely outlandish advertising and frequently erroneous claims that were being made about:

• that there would be numerous rigs littering the sea visible to the naked eye
• that there would be impossibly large rigs situated only 5 kilometres from the shoreline
• threats of oil spills
• threats to whales migratory patterns and marine life in general
• threats to the destruction of the fishing industry

Reports about the project from the media were also extremely biased and they amounted to what I would call a co-ordinated scare campaign. There were only a minuscule number of articles, I can only recall about two, maybe three at most, articles that presented a more balanced view of the merits of Pep-11 as opposed to countless which were promoting the same fear mongering approach.

We will never no the true extent of the supposed "community opposition" to the project when the community wasn't educated about the FACTS or the BENEFITS of the project, they were just bombarded with misleading information designed to scare them. Studies have shown for example that offshore gas platforms can function as “novel ecosystems” supporting diverse and abundant marine wildlife.

Similar points were raised by GrumpyGramps in his post below (which hopefully he doesn't mind me re-posting below).

thttps://www.uwa.edu.au/news/Article/2022/February/Offshore-oil-and-gas-platforms-create-novel-ecosystems