Should Australia adopt a more flexible approach to decommissioning– and what are the legal implications?

The international legal frameworks that inform Australia's regulatory approach to offshore oil and gas decommissioning were developed in the late 20th century. UNCLOS (1994), the IMO Guidelines (1989, amended 1998) and the London Convention/Protocol (1972/1996) reflect the environmental paradigm of the time; being the precautionary principle. It was a time when offshore oil and gas structures were viewed as wastes or hazards to navigation and ecosystems in general. The assumption at the time therefore was that full removal would always result in the best environmental and safety outcomes. At the time the concept of the clear and rehabilitated seabed was at the centre of the thought process. However, three decades later, a number of key developments may have shifted perspectives in science, policy, and industry.
There is a current direction in the scientific world that the clear seabed concept is not only outdated but could actually be detrimental. Evidence from other studies have concluded that leaving offshore oil and gas structures in situ (in place) can have both benefits and some risks (Fortune & Paterson 2020) and that some sort of re-evaluation of clear seabed policy would be beneficial. A review of OSPAR 98/3 by Paces et al. (2024) concluded that the clear seabed policy does not reflect current scientific knowledge.
In light of advances in science the continued presumption that full removal is the best environmental outcome could benefit from re-evaluation in light of modern decommissioning practices, advances in science, ecosystem-based approaches and the current state of the marine ecosystem and climate change stressors (i.e. warming temperatures, ocean acidification, deoxygenation, sea level rise and increased storm frequency and intensity). In that context, the removal of stable, biologically diversified colonised offshore structures may, in fact, be the opposite of the best environmental outcome by removing functional habitat that provides ecological resilience in often degraded and seascapes.