Shell faces prosecution on Australian bay spills

Shell Australia faces prosecution over repeated oil spills into Corio Bay, the latest in hundreds of environmental breaches at its Geelong refinery in the past two years. The Environment Protection Authority is gathering evidence on three spills in the past five months.
If the action goes ahead, it would be only the second time in recent years of monitoring the refinery that the EPA has gone to court, despite the refinery being in repeated breach of its licence requirements. Angry residents say they have had enough of the oil spills and emissions from the refinery, and believe the EPA has been too slow in taking Shell to court.

There are particular concerns about emissions of benzene, a known cause of cancer. A local medical specialist has called for the establishment of a database of people with respiratory ailments.
EPA officers have told that proceedings are likely to be launched in the Geelong Magistrates Court, where the maximum fine is limited to $ 100,000. A special investigation has found that the refinery has committed more than 300 licence breaches since the beginning of last year. It has been fined for 11 oil spills in 16 months. The EPA has fined Shell 31 times since 2000, and has issued it with three clean-up notices.

Shell Geelong's health, safety and environment adviser, Geoff Caddy, said that the EPA had started down the path of court action after the first spill in June. "We know they're taking witness statements and taking documentation as if they were preparing for a court brief," Mr Caddy said.
The EPA's south-west region manager, Tony Robinson, said the three spills were from holes in the pipes on the refinery's jetty. The first was on June 24, when 100 litres of oil and water spilt into the bay. The second occurred in September. The spill caused a 300-by-50-metre sheen. The EPA said the leak came from a pipe that cracked during cleaning.
"There is no line of defence," Mr Robinson said. "If it leaks, it goes straight into the bay."

Mr Caddy said Shell acknowledged the spills, and would defend itself in court. "We are in a legal process," he said. "We have said to the EPA, 'Listen, we have a hole in our line.' We're not hiding that. There's no secret about that. We know there was product in the water. There's no secret about that."
Mr Robinson said there had been issues with the thickness of the jetty pipelines since 1999, when a Shell worker made a hole in the pipe while scraping paint. Marcus Godino, executive director of Environment Victoria, said that while the EPA's performance had improved recently, there was "a bit of a sympathetic culture to business" inside the authority.

Sue Maclean, spokeswoman for Geelong Community for Good Life, said: "If the EPA were serious about getting Shell to improve their environmental performance, they would be putting in more resources."
Environment Minister John Thwaites said the refinery needed to improve its environmental performance. But he said driving improvements at a local level was more likely to generate cultural change "than simply going off to court".