In the early hours of August 21, 2009, a sea floor well emitted a burp of fluid and gas at the Montara oil field, 690 kilometres off the coast of Darwin.
Two hours later, a column of crude oil shot into the West Atlas drilling rig and continued unabated for 10 weeks.
The result was a calamity: 40 million litres of oil spread over an area of 90,000 square kilometres causing the worst spill of its kind in Australia’s history.
News article on 19 September 2023 by Linton Besser from www.abc.net.au
For further reading, please visit www.abc.net.au >> Decommissioning Australia’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure is expensive. But safety concerns and oil spill risks remain real