Skip to main content

Australian government launches offshore petroleum exploration permits for 47,000 sq km of ocean

Resources minister says exploration ‘central to alleviating future domestic gas shortfalls’ but Greens slam ‘mockery’ of climate target


The Albanese government has launched its first offshore petroleum exploration permits, opening up nearly 47,000 sq km of Australian waters to oil and gas exploration.

Ten areas stretching from the Ashmore and Cartier Islands in the Indian Ocean to Victoria’s Gippsland basin have been opened for exploration, in what the resources minister, Madeleine King, said would “play an important role in securing future energy supplies”.

“At the same time as we strive to reduce emissions, it must be emphasised that continued exploration for oil and gas in commonwealth waters is central to alleviating future domestic gas shortfalls,” she said.

“Australia’s energy sector also continues to support international energy security, particularly during the global turbulence caused largely by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”. But the move will further alarm environmental groups and climate watchers, who have already condemned plans to test for oil and gas along Victoria’s coast in a separate approval, which they say stands in contrast to Australia’s climate. The Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson said Labor was making “a mockery of its own weak climate target” by opening up more acreage for oil and gas exploration.

“We already have enough oil and gas in reserves to trigger catastrophic climate change to our planet,” he said.

“There’s no plausible excuse for Labor to put our marine ecosystems in jeopardy for the sake of a few profit-driven interests, to drill for the exact same product that is killing our oceans.”  Last year’s acreage release drew criticism for including an area 5km from one of Victoria’s most popular tourist destinations, the Twelve Apostles.

This year’s includes areas across the Bonaparte, Browse, Carnarvon, and Gippsland basins off the coasts of the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Victoria, and the Ashmore and Cartier Islands. Bidding closes in March next year.

At the same time, the Albanese government has approved the first offshore greenhouse gas storage areas since 2014, with permits awarded to Inpex, Woodside Energy and TotalEnergies in the Bonaparte Basin, and Woodside in the Browse Basin. Another five are soon to be awarded. Australia had higher levels of greenhouse gas pollution from coal per person than any other developed country in 2021, according to data released earlier this year.

Australia is the second most coal-dependent country for power generation in the OECD, behind Poland, according to the data compiled by UK-based thinktank Ember.  The Ember report says in 2021 emissions from coal amounted to 4.04 tonnes of CO2 for each person in Australia. Second-placed was South Korea, with 3.18 tonnes a year, followed by China (3.06), South Africa (2.68) and the US (2.23)... 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finland prime minister takes drugs test after party

Sanna Marin talks to the media in Helsinki on Friday. She said she had never taken any kind of drugs ‘even in my teenage years’   Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister, revealed she had taken a drugs test after a video emerged this week of her partying and dancing wildly with friends. Marin said she regarded calls for her to undergo a narcotics test as “unjust” but had agreed to it to dispel any suggestion she had taken drugs. In the clip that first appeared on social media this week, other partygoers reportedly mention the word cocaine. “In recent days, there have been quite grave public accusations that I was in a space where drugs were used, or that I myself used drugs,” Marin told a press conference in Helsinki on Friday.  “I consider these accusations to be very serious and, though I consider the demand for a drug test unjust, for my own legal protection and to clear up any doubts, I have taken a drug test today, the results of which will come in about a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Now Microsoft injects Copilot AI into Dynamics 365

Bringing Embrace, Extend, Extinguish to a business workforce near you.  Microsoft has dosed its Dynamics 365 business apps with "AI capabilities" to help human workers delegate tedious tasks to machines. Redmond's automation tools come in a preview form in a release called Dynamics 365 Copilot, a nod to the success of its GitHub subsidiary's controversial Copilot assistive code service. Microsoft sees automated content creation and algorithmically-driven behavior as a way to help employees using customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems avoid rote work. "Copilot brings the power of next-generation AI capabilities and natural language processing to Dynamics 365, working alongside business professionals to help them create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actions – just by describing what’s needed," explained Emily He, corporate VP of business applica...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Harvard nutritionist shares the No. 1 vitamin that keeps her brain ‘young and healthy’—and foods she eats ‘every day’

As a nutritional psychiatrist, I always make it a point to maintain a well-balanced diet. Much of that has to do with making sure I get all the right vitamins, especially because it’s essential to preventing cognitive decline. And given that the risk of neurological diseases increases as we get older, one question I often get from my patients is: “What is the best vitamin for protecting our aging brains?” Each of our microbiomes is like a thumbprint, so a truly effective eating plan is personalized to the unique needs of an individual. But the vitamin group I prioritize the most to keep my brain young and healthy are B vitamins. The brain benefits of B vitamins Depression, dementia and mental impairment are often associated with a deficiency of B vitamins, a study from the Wayne State University School of Medicine found. “A B12 vitamin deficiency as a cause of cognitive issues is more common than we think, especially among the elderly who live alone and don’t eat properly,”...
Post a Comment
Read more