MELBOURNE, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- ExxonMobil Australia aims to continue 30 or more years of oil and gas production in Australia's Bass Strait, offshore the state of Victoria's Gippsland coast, Dow Jones reports.
John Dashwood, chairman of ExxonMobil Australia, in a speech Sunday during an industry conference in Melbourne, highlighted the company's 40 years of operation in Bass Strait and said the oil giant supports a carbon tax to cut emissions rather than a carbon trading scheme.
Dashwood called on Australia's policymakers to create an environment that supports Australia's "greatest technical minds to pursue the most efficient energy solutions," the Oil Voice reports.
"The most effective such policies are those that create a reliable fiscal and regulatory framework that invites investment, stimulates open competition and capitalizes on the creative force of free markets," Dashwood said.
"When governments, however well intentioned, intervene in the energy market by picking winners through punitive taxes, trade barriers, tax incentives, subsidies or quotas, it inevitably leads to unintended consequences that result in greater costs to the community," he said.
The Australian Senate last week rejected the government's ambitious carbon trading scheme aimed at reducing global warming. The proposed law called for reducing greenhouse gases by between 5 percent and 15 percent of 2000 levels in the next decade, with a conditional upper limit of 25 percent if other nations agreed to similar targets during the December U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said last week the Australian government plans to re-introduce the legislation after three months. If the amended bill fails in November, it could lead the ruling Labor Party to call for an early election.
"A carbon tax is more transparent to consumers, will achieve greater environmental benefits and is more difficult to manipulate than a cap-and-trade program," Dashwood said.
"More importantly, it would provide certainty to investors and businesses so that investment decisions can be made to support engineers and scientist in their quest to find new solutions to the country's energy challenges."
Dashwood said that in the 40 years it has teamed with BHP Billiton in Bass Strait, the venture has produced almost 4 billion barrels of crude oil and 7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, contributing more than $200 billion to Australia's gross domestic product and some $300 billion in federal government revenues.
When the project began in 1969, it was expected to continue for 25 or 30 years. "Now, 40 years later, we are in the midst of a successful drilling program, are applying the latest technology to some of the oldest fields and fine tuning our tools to identify and develop additional sweet spots," Dashwood said.
The ExxonMobil-BHP Billiton venture now aims to produce an additional 1.6 trillion cubic feet of gas and 140 million barrels of oil and gas liquids from the Kipper-Tuna and Turrum projects, representing an investment of nearly $3 billion.
ExxonMobil, the oldest petroleum company operating in Australia, currently operates 21 offshore platforms in the Bass Strait.
