EPA wants no mess to clean up as terms for oil field player's exit decided

Monday, 6 April 2020

The Umuroa is attached to several lines and pipes, but it doesn't own that infrastructure and wants to disconnect from it and leave the field. (File photo)

The Environmental Protection Authority is trying to stop a floating oil production facility leaving the oil fields off the Taranaki coast while terms for its exit are still being decided.

But the owners of the Umuroa, a production, storage and offloading ship, say the authority (EPA) approved the terms in a 2017 decision, and it should be allowed to go.

The steps necessary before the Umuroa can leave the Tui oil field have become a point of contention. (File photo)

However it's unclear whether the Umuroa and its crew are stuck in the coronavirus lockdown, like most everything else.

A judge from the High Court in Wellington heard an urgent application via a telephone conference on Monday, in which the Environmental Protection Agency was trying to stop the Umuroa uncoupling from pipes and lines connected to the undersea drilling operation.

Oil and gas company Tamarind Taranaki has gone into liquidation. (File photo)

* Small amount of oil spilt off Taranaki coast

* Taranaki offshore oil exploration company placed under voluntary administration

* Iwi upset at possible seabed dumping of failed oil and gas company's equipment**

The pipes would be capped and then laid on the sea floor, which the EPA says carries a risk of discharge or contamination.

And local iwi were clear they did not want the environment damaged, the EPA's lawyer, Ian Carter said.

The pipework does not belong to BW Offshore which operates the Umuroa, but the company that does own them, Tamarind Taranaki Limited, is insolvent, and now defunct.

BW Offshore says it has to act soon if it's going to do the work needed to exit the field before winter.

The Environmental Protection Authority issued abatement notices to stop the work in the meantime, but BW Offshore obtained orders from the Environment Court stopping the effect of the abatement notices.

That prompted the EPA to go to the High Court to appeal against the Environment Court's decision and asking for an interim order for the Environment Court's decision not to take effect pending the appeal hearing.

Justice Francis Cooke reserved his decision.

BW Offshore says a decision is needed urgently but Carter, for the EPA, told the judge that the EPA was sceptical about the need for urgency for a number of reasons, including the Coronavirus lockdown, and that the work to disengage the Umuroa can't start again until the end of April.

Carter said BW Offshore was asking for the work to be declared an essential service.

BW Offshore's lawyer, Matt Conway, said the company was attempting to resolve the lockdown issue so that a new crew could join the ship and continue the work.

The pipes would be laid on the sea floor to be picked up later for decommissioning or to be attached to another facility like the Umuroa, Conway said.

Carter said the spectre was raised at the Environment Court of a 'ghost' ship, unmanned, tethered on ageing moorings, with about 40,000 barrels of oil aboard, but BW Offshore would not do that, which would in any event breach several laws.

Conway said that BW Offshore had not made the 'rather concerning' suggestion of a 'ghost' ship.

He said the EPA's 2017 decision for the oil exploration covered what BW Offshore now wanted to do.

The EPA said the circumstances had materially changed since 2017 and the EPA was in the process of laying down new rules for how the work could be done.