Woodside spills 16,000 litres of oil into ocean north of Ningaloo

EXCLUSIVE

Woodside spilled an estimated 16,000 litres of hydrocarbons into the ocean off the Pilbara coast on May 8 while cleaning up the Griffin oil and gas field abandoned by BHP in 2009.

A Woodside spokeswoman said that while a pipeline was being flushed to remove any residual gas before it was recovered to the surface, engineers saw fluids released into the ocean and stopped the pumps.

She said about 64,000 litres of water, hydrocarbons and chemicals - the volume of a backyard swimming pool - were released into the ocean.

The offshore safety and environment regulator, NOPSEMA, has estimated from its monitoring of the spill that 16,000 litres of the released fluid were hydrocarbons.

The spill occurred after 18 of a total of 21 pipelines on the seabed had been flushed.

Woodside's spokeswoman said that since the incident, a team of environmental scientists has monitored the discharge, with tracking buoys and spill modelling showing it was heading away from the coast.

"The risk to the marine environment is very low with no anticipated impact to shorelines or sensitive marine habitats," she said.

A NOPSEMA spokeswoman said the incident was under investigation and it could not comment further.

Ill-timed news for Woodside

The spill at Griffin occurred on the same day Woodside held its annual general meeting in Perth, where chief executive Meg O'Neill and chair Richard Goyder had defended the environmental credentials of Australia's largest oil and gas company.

At issue was the carbon pollution associated with gas, extending the life of Woodside's North West Shelf gas export plant that federal environment minister Murray Watt will decide on this week, and Woodside's proposed Browse development near Scott Reef.

In early 2024, the WA Environmental Protection Authority informed Woodside that its preliminary view was to reject Browse, and one of the main reasons was the risk of an oil spill affecting the pristine Scott Reef.

Just four days after the Griffin spill, Woodside's revised Browse plans were released by the EPA.

It included the use of novel equipment to stop oil spills that 18 months earlier, Woodside had described as "emerging technology."

Now it was so confident of the equipment that the potential of significant long-term consequences from an oil spill had "a probability of lower than remote and should be considered as only a mere theoretical possibility."

Earlier trouble during Griffin decommissioning

Recovery of a Griffin pipeline to the surface also went awry in 2024.

On 31 July 2024, when a flexible pipeline was lowered onto the deck of the Technip Deep Orient construction vessel, water shot out about six metres into the air with a rotten egg smell, according to a person familiar with the incident but not authorised to speak to the media.

The Woodside spokeswoman said there was an unexpected discharge of water and gas for about 30 seconds.

The source said high levels of hydrogen sulphide were detected and some crew members experienced headaches following the incident.

Woodside was asked whether the health of crew members was affected. It did not provide an answer.

"All personnel were behind designated barriers and moved inside when the discharge was observed," the Woodside spokeswoman said.

"The flowline was subsequently lowered to the seabed and the activity suspended."

The NOPSEMA spokeswoman said it was not advised of any adverse effects on the crew by Woodside or the vessel operator.

The regulator's investigation determined that BHP, the previous operator of the Griffin field, had inadequately prepared for decommissioning when production ceased in 2009.

Tardy BHP's dim ocean legacy

Woodside became responsible for the Griffin field when it bought BHP's petroleum business in 2022.

A year earlier, NOPSEMA had "given the limited action to date" ordered BHP to decommission three fields: Griffin which closed in 2009, Stybarrow also off WA that ceased production in 2015, and the Minerva field off the Victorian coast that closed in 2019.

Four years after Griffin closed its floating riser turret mooring sank to the seabed, making recovery more difficult. Woodside completed the task in December 2024.

BHP did not plug the subsea wells at Griffin to make them permanently safe until 2017, eight years after production ended.

Woodside has struck trouble decommissioning all three of the closed-down offshore fields that it took over from BHP.

Griffin has had two significant incidents involving the recovery of pipelines.

Earlier this year at nearby Stybarrow, there were three serious safety incidents in two months.

In March, Woodside told its Minerva partner, Amplitude Energy, that the cost to decommission the field has jumped by $240 million, more than doubling the earlier estimate.

While Minerva pipelines were being retrieved, about 200kg of plastic parts fell off and washed up on Victorian beaches. Woodside did not report the incident to NOPSEMA until weeks later.

Woodside is also exposed to half the decommissioning cost of the Exxon-operated Bass Strait fields that BHP held a 50 per cent stake in.

The company surprised analysts in February with an estimate that it could spend up to $1US billion ($1.5 billion) this year on decommissioning, much higher than they had expected.

UPDATE 27 May: Plastic pollution from Minerva decommissioning added.