Environmental Threats To The Great Barrier Reef - Oil

Oil

It was suspected that the Great Barrier Reef is the cap to an oil trap, after a 1923 paper suggested that it had the right rock formation to support "oilfields of great magnitude". After the Commonwealth Petroleum Search Subsidies Act of 1957, exploration activities increased in Queensland, including a well drilled at Wreck Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef in 1959. In the 1960s, drilling for oil and gas was investigated throughout the Great Barrier Reef, by seismic and magnetic methods in the Torres Strait, along "the eastern seaboard of Cape York to Princess Charlotte Bay" and along the coast from Cooktown to Fraser Island. In the late 1960s, more exploratory wells were drilled near Wreck Island in the Capricorn Channel, and near Darnley Island in the Torres Strait, but "all results were dry".

In 1970, responding to concern about oil spills such as the Torrey Canyon, two Royal Commissions were ordered "into exploratory and production drilling for petroleum in the area of the Great Barrier Reef". After the Royal Commissions, the federal and state governments ceased allowing petroleum drilling on the Great Barrier Reef. A study in 1990 concluded that the reef is too young to contain oil reserves. Oil drilling remains prohibited on the Great Barrier Reef, yet oil spills due to shipping routes are still a threat to the reef system, with a total of 282 oil spills between 1987-2002.