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Australian oil industry acting on lessons of Montara spill: APPEA

https://www.chemnet.com   Aug 12,2010
Australia's oil and gas industry has undertaken comprehensive reviews of its practices and operations in response to last year's oil spill and rig fire at PTT Exploration and Production's Montara well in the Timor Sea, the head of the local upstream industry association said Wednesday.


Applying the lessons learnt from the Montara incident is the local industry's top priority, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association Chief Executive Belinda Robinson said at the association's annual safety conference.


In addition to work by individual companies, a number of APPEA forums have been conducted involving industry experts to assist companies adopt leading safety and environmental performance, she said.


"The community expects our industry to operate safely and sustainably which is why the industry has so strongly supported the work of the Montara Commission of Inquiry," Robinson added. "Our industry needs to understand what happened at Montara, why it happened, and what is required to ensure such an event does not happen again. A great deal of information relating to the Montara incident is already available and enabling companies to take strong and immediate action."


PTTEP, an upstream arm of Thailand's state-owned energy group PTT,acquired the Montara project as part of its acquisition of Australia's Coogee Resources in December 2008, and planned to start producing about 40,000 b/d of oil from the field in late 2009.


The Montara well began leaking on August 21 last year, and continued to spill unabated for 10 weeks, eventually causing the drilling rig West Atlas to catch fire. Several attempts to "kill" the well were made by PTTEP over several weeks, but the leak was not successfully stopped until November 3.


The report of the Australian government's Commission of Inquiry into the leak was handed to the country's Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson on June 18, but the findings of the inquiry have yet to be made public. The government is currently in caretaker mode ahead of a general election to be held on August 21.


"The commissioner's report may not yet be released however the industry is certainly not sitting on its hands with companies reviewing practices and operations to ensure confidence in the industry's safety and environmental performance," Robinson told the conference.


Work has already begun on a number of cross-industry initiatives aimed at reducing the risk of further incidents and improving required responses, she
said. These include a review of minimum requirements on procedures for verification and testing of wells and barriers; actively participating in
development of new international standards and requirements for competencies
and training of personnel in critical safety roles; a comprehensive review by
the Australian Marine Oil Spill Centre of oil spill response equipment
stockpiles; and discussions about the potential for an industry-wide mutual
aid agreement to expedite deployment of equipment and personnel in response to
incidents.


"Australia's offshore oil and gas industry had not had an incident like Montara in 25 years and in that time it had drilled around 1,500 wells," Robinson said. "However, the tragic events at Montara -- and more recent
events [at the Macondo well blowout] in the Gulf of Mexico -- have understandably led to the performance of our industry coming under the
microscope."


Robinson added that the industry was looking forward to the opportunity to respond to the Montara Commission's recommendations.
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