✦ Plain-English Summary

Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Amendment 2019

What it does

This law updates the fees that oil and gas companies pay to the Australian government for offshore drilling and greenhouse gas storage activities. It changes how much companies are charged for different types of work — like exploring wells, maintaining them, and eventually abandoning them — under the existing regulatory system.

Why it matters

The levies fund the government agency (NOPSEMA) that oversees offshore petroleum and storage operations to ensure they're done safely and meet environmental standards. By adjusting these fees, the government ensures the regulator has adequate funding to do its job without directly using general taxpayer money.

Key details

• Well activity fees: Companies now pay updated charges when they drill, test, or work on offshore wells. The exact new amounts come into effect the day after the law passes for some activities, with others to be set by proclamation later.

• Greenhouse gas storage: New fee structures apply specifically to companies storing captured carbon dioxide offshore — including investigation levies, annual well charges, and activity fees.

• Abandoned wells: Companies pay levies when they permanently close and decommission old wells, ensuring costs for cleanup and monitoring are recovered from those responsible rather than taxpayers.

Most changes took effect immediately; some were delayed up to 6 months pending alignment with related legislation.

Official Description

Introduced with the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2019, the bill amends the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Regulatory Levies) Act 2003 to: enable the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) to recover the costs of its oversight of well operations under greenhouse gas titles by imposing a well investigation levy, an annual well levy and a well activity levy in relation to greenhouse gas wells; impose the well activity levy on submission of a five-yearly revision of a well operations management plan and remove the levy imposed on applications for approval to commence well activities; clarify that it is a compliance investigation under the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014 in relation to which a safety investigation levy or well investigation levy may be imposed; remove certain spent provisions; and remove references to specific titles of regulations, and instead enable references to the titles or provisions of regulations to be prescribed by regulations under the Act.

Committee Referrals

Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee

No formal division recorded

This bill passed by voice vote — parliament agreed without calling a formal count. A division is only recorded when a member explicitly requests one.

No votes yet.

No votes were recorded for this bill.