Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor supports the passage of these two bills: the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Cross-boundary Greenhouse Gas Titles and Other Measures) Bill 2019 and the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2019. These bills amend the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006. They were referred to the Economics Legislation Committee on 5 December and the committee reported on 7 February, recommending that the bills be passed.

The purpose of these bills is to improve the environmental management and workplace safety of offshore petroleum areas which will be used to store greenhouse gases. This is known as carbon capture and storage or CCS. The legislation allows titles in state and Commonwealth waters to be unified in one title for the purpose of the legislation and for Commonwealth levies to be raised on the greenhouse gas storage operators in that unified title.

The first bill, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Cross-boundary Greenhouse Gas Titles and Other Measures) Bill 2019, seeks to fix an anomaly in current offshore petroleum arrangements. State waters extend three kilometres from the coast, and beyond three kilometres they are Commonwealth waters. Yet greenhouse gas storage operations will be conducted into old gasfields that straddle both state and Commonwealth jurisdiction. The cross-boundary amendment bill allows for a Commonwealth and state offshore petroleum title to be unified for the purposes of greenhouse gas storage and for that unified title to be under one jurisdiction and regulated by Commonwealth agencies.

Under this bill adjacent Commonwealth titles can also be unified for greenhouse gas storage. Offshore petroleum activities in Commonwealth waters are regulated by statutory agencies: the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, which we refer to as NOPSEMA, and the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator, which is known as NOPTA. These amendments mean that if a project owner is injecting greenhouse gases into an old gasfield that straddles, for instance, Victorian state waters and adjacent Commonwealth waters then the legislation will treat them as one title and one jurisdiction, with regulatory oversight to be conducted by NOPSEMA and NOPTA with no ambiguity.

To make this unification of title and jurisdiction effective, the amendment bill establishes a cross-boundary authority consisting of the responsible Commonwealth minister and the relevant state or Northern Territory resources minister. The cross-boundary authority is similar to current joint authority arrangements for petroleum authorities in Commonwealth waters except that the cross-boundary authority will make decisions regarding the granting of cross-boundary greenhouse gas storage titles.

The cross-boundary amendment bill also enhances NOPSEMA's warrant-free inspection powers. An oil spill emergency has to be declared by the CEO of NOPSEMA before warrant-free powers are triggered, and the emergency must arise in Commonwealth waters. The bill limits the warrant-free inspection powers to determining whether the titleholder has complied or is complying with the oil pollution emergency provisions of an environmental plan and determining whether a titleholder is complying with a significant incident direction given by NOPSEMA. Significant incidents are those where there is petroleum escape or a threat of it. NOPSEMA can give directions to titleholders during significant incidents to do or not to do certain actions.

Under the existing legislation the regulator cannot give directions where the incident is in state or Northern Territory waters and the relevant emergency response assets could be under agreement with the state. This amendment fixes that problem. NOPSEMA can now make significant incident directions across the unified title. The power to make inspections without warrant is a serious one. It is considered necessary where the constraints of time and the serious nature of an emergency would make normal judicial warrants ineffective. Offshore petroleum titleholders operate under many oil spill response obligations, and the warrant-free inspection powers allow NOPSEMA to monitor whether the titleholders are complying with their response obligations.

This amendment bill also allows NOPSEMA's inspection powers to apply through state and Northern Territory waters within the unified area under the cross-boundary authority. Premises that can be inspected under NOPSEMA's powers are not confined to rigs and the offices of the operators. Vessels and aircraft are also defined as premises. We note that the minister will be able to require a person to produce information relevant to administering the greenhouse gas storage area, and in giving the information the person earns partial immunity on prosecution. Partial immunity is available only to individuals. The argument for this partial immunity is that for effective management of the greenhouse gas storage activities it might sometimes be more important to establish the facts than to be able to use the facts in a prosecution or legal action. The bill also extends the polluter-pays provision of the current OPGGS legislation to state and territory waters. The polluter-pays principle is, as it says, that the title holder that caused the petroleum spill is responsible for its clean-up.

The second amendment bill, the levies bill, ensures that offshore petroleum levies imposed by the Commonwealth are imposed on the unified titles under the jurisdiction of the cross-boundary authority, even that portion of the unified title that is in state or Northern Territory waters. This is an important amendment for offshore greenhouse gas storage activities because the regulators, NOPSEMA and NOPTA, both operate on a cost-recovery basis. When greenhouse gas storage is no longer being conducted on one of these unified titles under the cross boundary authority, the Commonwealth accepts the civil liability for the whole storage site at site closing. The argument for this acceptance of liability in the explanatory memorandum is that, if the Commonwealth assumes the civil liability for the entire site, it will ensure the highest standards in storage operations.

These two amendment bills are effectively being made to create jurisdictional and regulatory certainty around an important industry of the future, carbon capture and storage. In particular, the amendments are relevant to the Victorian CarbonNet and Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain projects. These projects will sequester CO2 from Latrobe Valley power stations into the seabed of Bass Strait and also generate hydrogen as a fuel for export to Japan. The CarbonNet project will inject CO2 into an area that straddles Victorian coastal waters for three nautical miles and Commonwealth waters. Its stated capacity is to store two million tonnes of CO2 each year and also create a future hydrogen industry—a zero emissions fuel.

The most important aspect of these amendments and previous amendments that passed in October is that they improve the ability of governments and private operators to address greenhouse gas emissions and assist in the development of zero emissions fuels while also holding the operators to high standards of environmental protection and workplace safety. It should be remembered that carbon capture and storage is carried out in areas that have already been exploited for oil and gas, and it uses similar well and pipeline infrastructure to the oil and gas business. So it is crucial that greenhouse gas storage is made safe for workers and, of course, for the environment. But carbon capture and storage is also a crucial technology in pursuing international emissions reduction targets, such as those Australia signed up to in Paris.

The International Energy Agency report from 2016, which is titled 20 Years of Carbon Capture and Storage, states that keeping global warming below two degrees will have to include carbon capture and storage. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also advocated carbon capture and storage as one of the key technologies that will help maintain global temperatures below two degrees Celsius. Carbon capture and storage is already being conducted at Barrow Island, in that magnificent state of Western Australia, where Chevron is sequestering one million tonnes of CO2 per year from its Gorgon LNG operation. The CarbonNet project, which provides the rationale for these bills, will do the same thing in the Bass Strait. However, it will involve another key element.

Joined to the CarbonNet project will be the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain project, which shares CO2 from the storage operation and then turns it into hydrogen. The plan for the current pilot plan at Port of Hastings is for the hydrogen to be loaded onto ships and transported to Japan. Not only is this a potential export industry for Australia but hydrogen is a zero emissions energy source. Using carbon storage and making it into something else is called carbon capture, utilisation and storage, or CCUS. The Commonwealth and the Victorian state governments have both invested in the hydrogen facility. The estimates are for a $2-billion-per-year hydrogen export industry as Japanese power companies and industrial companies convert to hydrogen. So projects such as CarbonNet and Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain are important components of Australia's pursuit of emissions reduction targets.

CCS is the only method for removing CO2 directly from coal-fired power stations and permanently sequestering it. When you combine CCS with hydrogen manufacture, the hydrogen can be made cheaply enough to make it a feasible large-scale energy source. However, we need to ensure that the pursuit of these future abatement strategies and fuels are not achieved at the cost of the environment or at the cost of worker safety. After that brilliant contribution, how can you not support these amendments?

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland in Australia, I make it clear that One Nation opposes these bills, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Cross-boundary Greenhouse Gas Titles and Other Measures) Bill 2019 and Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2019. I cannot in good faith support bills that give more power to bureaucrats who are not using their existing powers correctly.

These bills strengthen the monitoring, inspection and enforcement powers of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, NOPSEMA. NOPSEMA is the same agency that ran about like cowboys raiding Lloyd's of London to get information on a vessel owned by an Australian company that they then subsequently ran out of business. 'Timorgate', as their actions became known, targeted an Australian company, Northern Oil and Gas Australia, NOGA, who were operating the Northern Endeavour, a purpose-built oil production and storage production platform in the Timor Sea. An insignificant safety event on board the ship unleashed NOPSEMA on this unsuspecting company who self-reported the incident. They took responsibility for it. After months of persecution over this single insignificant safety breach, the company went into receivership. As a result of NOPSEMA's inexplicable actions, China swooped in and bought the Northern Endeavour, NOGA's production leases and their airport on Timor. NOPSEMA has a charter to manage our offshore resource projects for the benefit of Australians, not the Chinese. NOPSEMA's actions resulted in the loss of 250 Australian jobs from a company that has paid $320 million in taxes. Perhaps that was NOGA's problem—a company that pays its taxes had to go, as it was making this government's big corporate mates look bad. Now we want to give NOPSEMA more power. Like hell! One Nation want a review of the operations of NOPSEMA before we expand their powers.

There is another built-in flaw in this legislation, and it goes to the parent legislation, the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, or OPGGS for short. This act supports the notion that the right place for carbon dioxide is buried underground instead of providing life-affirming food for a natural environment. Are we going nuts in this place? This is absolutely insane. According to NASA, carbon dioxide production by humans is fertilising the earth. I'll debunk that in a minute, but I want to show you the power and significance of carbon dioxide. NASA has found 'from a quarter to half of Earth's vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide' and CSIRO has found the same. But note: they say it's due to rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. They didn't say 'human production'. We cannot claim that carbon dioxide, including that from burning oil, gas and coal, is making crops grow faster and stronger, improving yields of food and fibre that feed and clothe the world, because human carbon dioxide does not and cannot increase the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

I'll explain why. The earth's atmosphere contains a certain amount of carbon dioxide. The earth's oceans contain 50 to 70 times more carbon dioxide in dissolved form than in the entire atmosphere. The United Nations' so-called climate agency admits this. The data shows that, as water temperature rises, the solubility of carbon dioxide in water decreases and the oceans liberate carbon dioxide and we get a rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When the oceans cool, due to that big ball in the sky that you see in the day—the sun—it increases the solubility of carbon dioxide in the oceans and that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Nature itself produces an estimated 32 times more carbon dioxide every year than the entire production from humans. What that means is that nature overwhelmingly dominates the level of carbon dioxide production and, in addition, the oceans control that level according to the temperature of the oceans. And there are many other factors to do with the vegetation in the oceans and on the land as well.

Let me give you a few more facts, because it is an absolutely ridiculous proposition to bury life-giving carbon dioxide in the ground and, worse, to do it at enormous cost. Firstly, let's get the term correct. The Labor Party and the Greens keep referring to carbon dioxide, essential for all life on earth, as carbon pollution. I'll ask you all to think about the term 'pollution' in a minute. Carbon dioxide is a gas—colourless, tasteless, odourless and invisible. It's called a trace gas because the scientific community recognises that there's bugger all of it. There is 0.04 per cent in the atmosphere. That's four 100ths of one per cent. There's virtually nothing there—and yet it is essential for life on this planet, because every one of us in this chamber, every human, every living organism, contains in every single cell in our bodies the element carbon.

Carbon's not very common in the universe, but the beauty of earth, the miracle on earth, is that carbon is concentrated. That element is concentrated, and that's what makes life possible on our planet. Carbon is a source of life. Every one of us, including the senators now looking down at the ground, is based on carbon. It's in every cell of our bodies. When we breathe, we take in oxygen. We also combine that in our lungs, our digestive systems and our blood with carbohydrates—carbon and hydrogen—in the food that we take in. The carbon in that food produces carbon dioxide when combined with oxygen. The hydrogen combines with the oxygen to produce H20, water. So our basic chemistry is that we take in carbon, we take in hydrogen and we produce water and carbon dioxide—which are essential for all the trees on this planet. How ironic that the Greens demonise carbon pollution, because carbon dioxide, nature's trace gas, essential for all life on earth, is essential for everything green we see on this planet—in the oceans and on the land. So carbon dioxide is essential for life.

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is miniscule. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not affected by human impact because of the oceans. If humans produce slightly more or incredibly more, the oceans release slightly less. If humans produce less carbon dioxide, then the oceans release more. We see that in the fact that, after the global financial crisis in 2008, most countries went into a recession—there was globally a recession—the level of energy used was less in 2009. That means that we produced less carbon dioxide from humans; yet the level in the atmosphere continued to increase.

What that means—if senators stop and pause and think, in serving the people of Australia—is that it doesn't matter if humans cut our carbon dioxide output, because the oceans will dictate the level in the atmosphere. Senator Sterle talked about greenhouse gas storage and capture. It's a nonsense. It doesn't matter how much we pump into the ground and take away from the plants, it will not affect the level in the atmosphere, but it will cost us—and I will give you the explanation later in this speech. It cost 1.3 billion just for one series of burials for carbon dioxide from power stations and cement plants in Norway.

Every single person in this chamber right now takes in air with 0.04 per cent of carbon dioxide and we're all breathing out four to five per cent, that is we're increasing the carbon dioxide levels in our air by 100 times or more. You, according to the Greens' senators, are all carbon polluters.