Gas explosion details kept under wraps
COMMENT: Varanus Island is off the northwest coast of Australia, so this may seem a little esoteric. But it is not. Oil and gas is a global industry and the companies will get away with whatever they can wherever they can. A bit more latitude to cut costs and cut corners in South America or Africa, a somewhat higher level of performance in Europe and North America. And Australia.
It is only regulation, and government's will to enforce it, that makes the difference.
So what happens in Australia is watched closely in Canada, and in British Columbia. Apache is a gas producer in northeast BC, with conventional and shale gas plays, and boasts of being Canada's largest producer of coalbed methane. The information lockup that the courts permitted Apache Energy in Australia, is an approach to doing business, and it could happen here.
But maybe it wouldn't need to, given how little timeliness and real disclosure there is already with oil and gas incidents. How much do we know, even today, about these incidents: BC Ferries' Queen of the North, the LeRoy Trucking barge, the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline spill in Burnaby, or the bombings of EnCana's pipeline facilities?
That lack of transparency is without any court orders at all.
ABC News
Sat May 23, 2009
 The Varanus Island gas explosion cut WA's gas supply by a third. (Map: Perth 6000) |
Apache Energy has had a legal win to restrict the release of information about the Varanus Island gas explosion.
The explosion off the Karratha coast happened almost a year ago and cut Western Australia's gas supplies by a third.
Yesterday the Federal Court restricted a joint state and federal inquiry from using documents provided by Apache Energy in its final report.
Apache claimed the information was commercially sensitive.
The Mines Minister Norman Moore says the court action is only delaying information which will eventually come out.
"The state has just appointed inspectors under the Petroleum Pipeline Act which will enable them to have access to that information and they can then report to me as inspectors under that act," he said.
Apache has been contacted for comment.
Posted by Arthur Caldicott on 23 May 2009