A glorious win? Yes?
Big news in the surfers vs corpo overlord files today.
If you frequent social media you’d be familiar with the #fightforthebight campaign that’s been waged against Norwegian resources company, Equinor.
The Nords wanted to extract oil deep below the seafloor of the Great Australian Bight marine park, a couple hundred clicks off the South Australian coastline, in one of the wildest and most pristine environments you’ll find anywhere on earth.
A $200m project to deepwater drill in the conservation-listed area.
Funny thing is, Equinor could have maybe snuck under the radar with their plans if it wasn’t for a self-inflicted PR blunder, an own goal, that saw them release a map showing every possible oil spill dispersion from the proposed site, based off all the conceivable combinations of wind, swell, ocean current etc.
When looked at without context it appeared that a single spill would sully the waters from Port Macquarie in the east to Albany in the west, all at once. In American terms, that’d be from North Carolina to Baja.
Immediately the strategic initiative was lost.
That single image galvanised a groundswell of public support, led by former Tracks editor Sean Doherty and South Oz core lord Heath Joske.
Everyone from Taj Burrow to fastidiously manicured eco-warrior-influencers got behind the push, along with a bunch of NGOs. There were insta shares, IRL paddle outs across the affected areas. It was even successfully weaponised as a local issue in last year’s federal election.
The campaign worked.
Equinor said in a statement today that it has pulled out of the project for economic reasons after a “holistic view of its exploration portfolio.”
The Australian government ain’t happy.
Its wonderfully named resources minister, Keith Pitt, had recently doubled down on his predecessor’s love for the project and the sector in general, declaring Australia’s doors open for business to offshore oil and gas.
For him this withdrawal is a hit to the economy.
Jobs, growth ‘n all that.
You won’t see any such sad faces from me though.
I reckon it’s a great win. What grass-roots political action should look like.
You can make your jibes about surfers and their carbon footprints, burn your smartphones if you wanna be a greenie etc.
It’s a strawman argument.
Things ain’t black and white.
The resource sector is still an important part of the economy, but it needs to be managed in an environmentally sustainable way.
Deepwater drilling in a marine national park ain’t that.
This is a good outcome.
A couple of Qs were shot to Doherty but there was no response at the time of writing, assuming the gloried surf writer slash activist is enjoying a celebratory beer or three.
What do you think?
Is it a glorious win for surfers and the environment?
Or self-sabotage from a bunch of dewy eyed hypocrites during a time of increasing economic uncertainty?
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elo pulls equal time down at the pier
How are the Norwegians supposed to pay for their socialized medicine without all their viscous oil profits?
Electric cars will eventually kill the oil industry but that’s 20 years away. In the meantime the Permian basin in the US is almost drilled out. They kept shedding rigs when the price was going up (they should be adding rigs if that was the case). Those shale wells deplete 50-70% yoy and even though the US is pumping 13 million barrels a day, that production will plummet in a few years and that will send oil back to 100+ bucks a barrel. That’s when deep water drilling becomes economic and some other company will dip their toe into the bight.
Is that just in a 1 inch radius?
Yep climate’s changing….like it has since forever. I think most people actually think (what little of it they do) that there was at some time a perfect global temp and then cars came into being and the worlds been hot ever since. Oblivious that the world has been much warmer than now fairly recently (midieval warm period), and much colder as well (fairly recently).
bUT tHE pRotEsters drivE cArs aN pAdDl3 pLasTik seRf boRDs!!!!!….
No mattresses on reef.
That would dull the executioner’s blade.
Just under the lanai. I shall sleep with the roaches and centipedes, but get wet daily with the gods.
Unfortunately it is. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I’m glad the project is not going ahead, and fair play to everyone who protested, but the project didn’t make financial sense, and that is the reason they pulled out. To claim this as a victory on the behalf of the environmentalists isn’t correct. I’d love it if the project was canned because of environmental considerations, but clearly it wasn’t!
This is a great win. The big hit on the economy is climate change which they should know having more than half their country burn to the ground.
now they need to focus attention on stabilising the Middle East to ensure the steady oil supply keeping the price low enough for the project to remain unviable. that or just convince all their mates to stop using so much petrol driving on endless surf checks and strike missions.
If anything the WSL has shown us that surfers don’t matter, hope Seano kept it humble and stuck to 3 beers only – but good on them for sticking up for something they believe in. Just be careful what you wish for. $200 million compared to the $124 billion in projects that have been shelved up here in the great white north, ask the teachers, students, healthcare workers and their patients what its like when their budgets are suddenly cut and they are lining up with some of the most educated youth that are loaded up with debt and limited options, “Intellectual Property” that is leaving town, IP that would ultimately better serve the needed change than a bunch of hyprocritcal SJW that really serve no common good. .
Wow!!!, the Grit is the very first to actually identify the Map for what it is…. well done. Messaged Seano and told him it was a fuck up, but hey sucked in the sheep of the world. Hopefully now they can act on the proposed drilling off the Gnarloo coast? Bet they don’t though.
I’m sure the Patagonia marketing team will find something for Sean soon
GOAT–I was not aware you cared about the distributive and procedural justice aspects of global warming!? Bring it!
Think Jen See is about the only female reader at BG?
BG is our Mt Athos
Nah, Chas has been attracting them with shark bait stories.
…and who use our government funded social services, like medicare and free education, heavily reliant on the resource sector. Every Australian is Balls deep in Mining, whether they like it or not.
Surfers declaring that they won this is misguided. You can be on the winning side and yet contribute little to nothing in the grand scheme of this.
I wonder how many protesters are studying physics, chemistry or engineering to help enable a more sustainable future?
Presumably at Byron Bay Institute of Technology (BIT)?
You don’t think for a second that the protests stopped them?
The funny thing is unless you want pay $10/litre of fuel one day the only economic replacement for oil is electric cars recharged by nuclear power stations.
No – the solution is an electric car – of which I now own 2 – powered by SOLAR – which I am getting.
I seriously
don’tenjoy being that guy,butso here it goes;If you shit on Equinor, after voting for your current government, you’re an idiot. No one should expect a company, least of all one from a far away country, to adhere to moral/ethical standards that your own government does not abide by. That’s not how our current economic system works, not even in Norway. And let me add, while I’m already ranting. This is, at best, a break in the action. Equinor, like BP and Chevron before them, made an assessment of their likely return on investment*. Turns out it’s not worth it while the oil price is below $60 US. Now, if Sanders were to become US president next year, fracking would be phased out and the oil price will likely climb north of $80 again. At which point their assessment will likely change and no amount of paddle outs will stop them or some other company from pumping.
* yes, that assessment included potential public and political backlash, both for them as well as for the current Australian government
Edit: Why pretend.
see above…
Change has begun but the price of oil/petrol is going up before it goes down
Change has already began on a scale in our society that we really do not know the outcomes. 100,000 out of work but hey lets encourage emerging industries that make news headlines with the hiring of 400 programmers – hahahahha I paid $4.25 for 3 tomatoes this week.