Paying bonds is standard practice.
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Most of us have paid a bond to live in a rental property. Mining companies pay bonds to clean up if there's environmental mess left behind.
I even paid a bond to hire my witch's hat and cape for Halloween.
Yet since oil and gas production in Australia's sublime oceans began in 1969, the likes of Esso, BHP, Woodside and Santos have been burying pipelines, drilling wells and installing platforms, never paying a cent in bonds to ensure this vast volume of infrastructure actually gets removed and the environment cleaned up.
Right now, Australia's oceans are littered with 1008 well heads, 57 platforms, 13 floating facilities and 8165 kilometres of pipeline.
That's enough pipeline to circle Tasmania five times. Each well head alone weighs around 8.5 tonnes - the equivalent of six Volkswagen golfs.
So why should you or I care about offshore oil and gas clean up, or "decommissioning" as the industry calls it?
Quite apart from the mind-blowing volumes of steel, concrete and plastic clogging up our oceans, the answer is in the saga of the Northern Endeavour oil platform.
Knowing the oil was running out, Woodside sold the Northern Endeavour for a dollar to the Northern Oil and Gas Australia group of companies, which promptly went broke.
![Australia's oceans are littered with a large number of well heads. Picture Shutterstock Australia's oceans are littered with a large number of well heads. Picture Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/pMXRnDj3SUU44AkPpn97sC/29282f9b-ea98-4d62-8820-95c7ef92d206.jpg/r0_728_3898_2920_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
With no bond to fall back on, the Australian government got the clean up job. You and I, as taxpayers, got the $2 billion bill.
The then Liberal government quickly introduced a one-off temporary levy to raise clean-up funds from the rest of the oil and gas industry. But this won't cover the next time an oil and gas company goes broke without a bond. And there will be a next. And a next, and a next.
Over the coming decades in Australia, more than $60 billion in oil and gas cleanup will need to happen.
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Right now, especially while companies like Woodside and Santos are making giant profits, the Australian Labor government must ensure offshore oil and gas companies actually set money aside.
Australia could follow the lead of places like the United Kingdom and Indonesia, where companies pay money into a dedicated account or fund - essentially a bond.
Oil and gas clean up bonds will help protect oceans, deliver thousands of decommissioning jobs for offshore oil and gas workers and ensure the Australian public is not left with the fossil fuel industry's $60 billion clean-up tab.
If gas and oil companies aren't made to pay right now, it's you and I (and our children) who will.
- Fern Cadman is the fossil fuel industry campaigner for the Wilderness Society.