BP’s plans to drill for oil in the pristine marine reserve of the Great Australian Bight will come under fresh scrutiny, as senators seek to reinstate a lapsed inquiry examining the company’s proposal.

But it could be a race against time, since the regulator assessing BP’s environmental plans is set to make a decision on whether to approve two of the wells, inside the marine park, by 19 September. In response, activists have called on the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (Nopsema) to reject BP’s application.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young was in Ceduna in South Australia this week, visiting fisheries, councillors and tourism operators who could be affected by an oil spill in the area.

“The interesting thing about being here in the last two days is just how widespread the concern is from the communities along the coast,” she told Guardian Australia on Thursday.

“Even for those who were reluctant to say they are opposed – they say they haven’t been given enough information, that they have been locked out of consultation.”

Hanson-Young said she would seek to re-establish the lapsed inquiry when parliament resumed next week. She said on her trip around the Great Australian Bight she found strong opposition from most quarters.

“Many locals and the oyster growers feel as though very little information about the drilling has been made available to them and are very concerned about what’s coming down the line,” Hanson-Young said.

With the regulator poised to make a decision about whether to accept one of BP’s environmental plans within weeks, potentially receiving an approval before the inquiry begins, Hanson-Young said approval should not be rushed.

“The only people who want to rush this is BP because they want to make money,” she said. “It is not in anyone else’s interest to rush this. And yet we hear that BP is arrogantly moving ahead. They’ve built the rig. It’s waiting to be brought here in weeks or months.”

The inquiry was initiated in the previous parliament by former Greens senator Robert Simms and independent Nick Xenophon, with the backing of Labor.

In the course of the inquiry, before the parliament was dissolved for the July election, the Senate heard evidence that the approval process for offshore oil exploration was overly secretive, with all the major documents like environmental plans and safety assessments hidden from the public and from those who might be affected by the operation.

Even BP’s modelling of any potential spills has been kept secret, leaving the Wilderness Society to commission its own, which showed a spill could affect the entire southern coast of Australia.

A spokeswoman for Xenophon told Guardian Australia he would also seek to re-establish the inquiry.

Labor’s spokesman for environment and water, Tony Burke, said that there were “elements to BP’s plan that we need to know more about”.

“The project certainly seems to be quite different to other drilling operations, so I’ll be seeking further information from relevant parties, including the proponent, Nopsema and environmental scientists,” Burke said.

If the new members of the committee don’t agree to restart the lapsed inquiry, the Senate would need to start a new inquiry. Without the support of the Coalition, it would require the backing of Labor, Greens, Xenophon and one more.

Wilderness Society campaigner Jess Lerch said the fact that senators felt they had not been given enough information should ring alarm bells.

“BP is required to undertake adequate consultation as part of the approval process, but it has been an utter farce, with BP continually refusing to provide full information about its plans and the risks they present to stakeholders and the community,” Lerch said.

“Australia’s offshore oil and gas authority, Nopsema, clearly must reject BP’s applications to drill in the Bight, including its latest Environmental Plan after two previous applications were sent back.”

BP has had its environmental plan for four wells in the Great Australian Bight rejected twice by Nopsema.

The agency said the plans did not meet regulatory requirements, but since the plans are kept secret, it is not known what BP proposed to do that was not considered safe.

Nopsema said it usually gave applicants only three chances to resubmit their applications but in August BP submitted a new environmental plan for two of its four wells, which appeared to reset the clock on that part of the application.

The Great Australian Bight was included in Australia’s commonwealth marine reserve network, with the federal government concluding it was a “globally important seasonal calving habitat for the threatened southern right whale”.

The reserve was also established because it was an important foraging area for threatened Australian sea lions, threatened white sharks, migratory sperm whales and migratory short-tailed shearwater.

The particular part BP has proposed to drill two wells is listed for its benthic invertebrate communities – animals that live on the very bottom of the seafloor like sea urchins, sea squirts, starfish, shellfish, sponges and lace coral. In such deep waters, the only activity that was likely to disturb them is oil or gas drilling.

Hanson-Young said on her fact-finding mission people were often shocked oil exploration would be allowed in a marine reserve. “What is the point of having these places if a company can come and drill for oil?”

Veteran environmentalist and former Greens leader Bob Brown recently returned from a trip to the Great Australian Bight, and told Guardian Australia: “It would be very unwise for BP to move that leased oil rig from South Korea”.

“This is rapidly growing into a national and international furore,” he said, saying NOPSEMA appeared to be working too closely with BP, and not giving the public the information it needed to properly scrutinise the plans.

An oil spill in the Great Australian Bight could threaten South Australia’s $442m fishing industry and coastal tourism industry, which could be worth more than $1bn and employs almost 7,000 people.

In 2010, BP was responsible for the world’s biggest oil spill, at the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. That occurred in waters that were significantly calmer and more shallow than the wells proposed in the Great Australian Bight.

BP maintains that oil and gas exploration can safely coexist with the marine environment. “We have assessed potential environmental issues from exploration activities in the Great Australian Bight and in turn incorporated this into our planning,” a spokeswoman told Guardian Australia earlier this month.

Source: www.theguardian.com