Environmental research

The industry is strongly committed to research to further improve its environmental performance and further reduce its operating environmental footprint. Maintaining a strong commitment to rigorous environmental research and focusing on evidence-based policy will deliver economic and environmental benefits for the industry and for Australia.

Over the past three years alone, oil and gas companies have invested tens of millions of dollars in new environmental studies, generating a wide range of research. These included environmental baseline research, studies on sound and other potential impacts on whales, turtles and other marine life, as well as impact studies on fauna and flora, and studies on the effects of fluids and new technologies. Such project-related research generates wider community benefits by increasing scientific knowledge and understanding of the Australian environment.

Geoscience Australia is working with oil and gas companies to archive environmental data and to use company data to build regional bathymetry and biodiversity maps that can used for marine zone management.

Oil and gas companies make great efforts to understand and protect the sensitive environments in which they operate, and the sector as a whole is among Australia’s largest supporters of environmental research.

The industry has also resolved to give greater priority to identifying and managing opportunities for cooperative research projects between industry and the Australian Government to bridge the gap in scientific opinion on the impacts of seismic exploration on whales and other marine species.

The Joint Industry Program on E&P Sound and Marine Life is about to start a major study of the behavioural response of humpback whales to sound generated by seismic sources. This $10 million research project includes several Australian researchers in partnership with global marine sound and whale experts. The results will be used to guide the design and management of seismic surveys and mitigation procedures. This, in turn, will support the industry’s ongoing case for access to marine areas and will show that petroleum operations can coexist with growing whale populations.

In recent years Australia's oil and gas industry has undertaken more than 40 research projects relating to the marine environment. A Compilation of Recent Research into the Marine Environment brings together this research together and provides a simple summary of the outcomes and findings of these projects. This volume includes 20 projects on whales and dolphins, as well as research on other wildlife and flora; fish, molluscs and crustaceans; the operational effects of oil and gas activities; and community projects and education.

Throughout 2008–09, the industry invested tens of millions of dollars to undertake several new environmental studies. A summary of all these new studies and their value to general scientific understanding of the Australian environment will be released in 2010.