Stefan Bradley
Esso Australia, the subsidiary of ExxonMobil Australia, has been running consultations and information sessions for the community to discuss their activities in operating and decommissioning its Gippsland and Bass Strait facilities.
This includes a Wednesday evening last month (August 21) at the Criterion Hotel, Sale, which focused on the community interested in specific projects.
Other sessions have seen Esso invite the community to learn more about offshore activities, including decommissioning, carbon capture and storage, and jack-up rig drilling Kipper Environment Plan.
Esso says it runs these drop-sessions each quarter of the year, and has been doing them for about two years.
Esso has been meeting with Indigenous groups, local councils, commercial fishers and commercial fishers.
Esso stakeholder consultation advisor Kimmi Sandeman said there was a broad range of issues brought up by the public.
“It’s environmental concerns. And jobs is another one,” Ms Sandeman said.
“We run these sessions to be in the community and provide people information on what we’re proposing to do. It is part of what we need to do as for our regulators.
“But also it’s really important to us to have an informed community, so that’s why we’re here.”
Ms Sandeman said their most “high profile project” was the decommissioning of their old oil platforms in the near-future.
“We’re doing more consultation on our pipelines in our offshore space. We do have a couple of drilling campaigns…for gas. So we’re going to be producing gas for probably another decade,” she said.
“And then also we’ve got a proposed carbon capture and storage project. We have been utilising these reservoirs for 50 years, and we feel that some of them are really suitable for carbon capture and storage.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best turn-out. However, one special guest did turn up and that was Terry Donahoe from Maffra, who worked at Esso from 1969 to 1999. He enjoys seeing what his former employer and their workers are up to.
“I used to work for Esso down in Melbourne, and every time I go down there, I say ‘what’s happening, what’s happening here and what’s happening there?’” Mr Donahoe said.
Esso in 2027 is planning to remove or partially remove around half of its structures in the Gippsland Basin. Some structures will be removed up to 55 metres deep, with the rest of it remaining in sea to preserve marine ecosystems that have developed over the years.
Game Fishing Association of Victoria president Steve Taranto told the Gippsland Times the remaining structures would be positive for recreational fishers.
“We see (the structures), as recreational anglers, as a benefit (if) they are retained as artificial structures,” Mr Taranto said.
“And we see these reefs four or five decades in the making as the most effective artificial reefs in the state.”
Mr Taranto said pelagic fish, marlin and tuna and other reef species will congregate around the structure.
“We’ve indicated to Esso that we would be supportive of the structure remaining,” he said.
Esso’s current assets in the Bass Strait are 421 wells, 19 platforms, over 800 kilometres of subsea pipeline and six subsea facilities.
Esso’s gas production in the Bass Strait will continue into the 2030s, but oil production will cease by the end this year.
