Murray Burling - general manager of Asia Pacific ASA, which RPS acquired in 2013 - spoke to Energy News about industry and Australian regulators' efforts to prevent and mitigate oil spills in light of current planned exploration in the Bight.

RPS APASA's a team of experts, who offer 24/7 modelling response for marine oil and chemical spills, have responded to industry's big clangers like the Montara oil spill in the Timor Sea, the Pacific Adventurer oil and chemical spill in Queensland and the Shen Neng oil spill and grounding in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Most importantly in the context of the Senate inquiry into BP's plans, Burling's US colleagues at RPS ASA advised the US government in responding to the UK super-major's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico - the event that activists are using as leverage to pressure regulators and the Senate to ban exploration in the Bight.

RPS APASA is undertaking spill response modelling work for other prospective Southern Margin explorers among Santos, Chevron Corporation and Murphy Oil.

While some European oil spill specialists told Energy News at the recent Spillcon conference in Perth that Australia's oil spill response regulations were ‘somewhat lax', Burling said nothing could be further from the truth.

"It's interesting that it's the prevailing view among some people, when in fact it's probably quite the opposite," he said.

"I think Australia has put a lot of good systems and practice in place. AMSA [Australian Maritime Safety Authority] has been at the forefront of that.

"AMOSC [Australian Marine Oil Spill Centre] is the response agency for industry which industry contributes to … they have a partnership with AMSA and are party to a national spill response plan."

AMOSC operates Australia's major oil spill response equipment stockpile on 24 hour standby for rapid response anywhere around the Australian coast.

AMOSC was established in Geelong, Victoria at a cost of $10 million, financed now by 10 oil companies and other businesses that carry out the vast majority of the oil and gas production, offshore pipeline, terminal operations and tanker movements around Australia's coast.

However, Burling said the 2009 incident - when sloppy well completion caused the Montara wellhead platform to suffer a blow-out resulting in oil, gas and condensate being released into the sea - showed that even "relatively small" oil spills could travel large distances, and that their effects could resonate in ways industry would not expect.

"With all the issues with Indonesia and so forth, you need to bear in mind where the oceanographic and atmospheric systems may take the oil, and even might not be an environmental issue," Burling said.

"It might even be a perception issue. Communities might feel that the spill has affected them, and that's a real issue that needs to be addressed.

"It shows the importance of understanding your environment and where things can go, and being prepared for potential outcomes.

"At the time of Montara it wasn't fully understood the nature or the geographical extent of what a spill could affect.

"That's much more understood and recognised now, and again since Deepwater Horizon, which had a significant impact over a large area."

A key difference with the Gulf was it was a much more populated zone with multiple jurisdictional issues and different politics, whereas Montara happened well offshore where the main jurisdictions involved were Australia, Indonesia and East Timor.

None the less, the ocean is still a place where industry faces the prospect of being "unconstrained" if there is an oil spill.

"That's the situation with the Bight - a lot of work needs to be - and has been - put into the oceanography and the metocean conditions in the Bight and how that might affect an oil spill," Burling said.

"The ocean is connected; it's a free-flowing thing, so there is a downstream element. Currents will take oil or debris a long way over a long period of time. So the challenge for industry is understanding where oil might go so they can be prepared to respond in an appropriate time."

Some studies into oceanographic currents have suggested that if there is a long-term blowout of a Deepwater Horizon scale in the Bight the oil could potentially reach Sydney.

Burling said that while the population factor would bring such things into more focus, there is also an "amazing natural environment" all along the Bight coast - "and that's not lost on the operators".

"It's not in their interests to have an event, so they put a lot of effort into their design and processes to ensure these things don't happen, and we know the risk of these things actually happening is very low, but unfortunately they do happen," he said.