Sydney - The Australian government Tuesday rejected criticism that it was not pushing a Thai oil exploration company hard enough to cap a leaking Timor Sea oil well and clean up the spill. "We are head down and bum up on this," Environment Minister Peter Garrett said. "They must meet all of the conditions and requirements that have been identified by the (government) and I expect they will."
Former rock star Garrett was responding to barbs from environmentalists over the spill at the West Atlas drilling platform operated by Thailand's PTTEP Australasia in the Montara field, 690 kilometres west of Darwin.
Around 400 barrels of oil and gas a day have been leaking from a ruptured undersea pipe since August 21.
Conservation organization WWF has a boat in the region off Australia's east coast and reported that the slick could cover up to 15,000 square kilometres. There is a 40-kilometre exclusion zone and so the WWF only has rough estimates of the scale of the pollution.
"We have to dispel the myth that it's a desert out here," WWF-Australia conservation director Gilly Llewellyn told The Australian newspaper. "This is a rich feeding area for many species of marine life as well as migratory birds."
By the Environment Department's measuring, fewer than a dozen birds are known to have been affected by the sludge. But Llewellyn warned that countless seabirds, fish, sea snakes, turtles, whales and dolphins could be at risk.
Garrett said department officials were monitoring the impact on wildlife and were as concerned as conservationists.
"We'll pick up any impact that may be taking place on wildlife as soon as they do and take the appropriate responses," the former Midnight Oil singer said.
PTTEP brought a mobile rig from Indonesia and was drilling 2.6 kilometres into the seabed to intersect the leaking well and plug it with drilling mud.
The company, which expects the drilling to take at least three more weeks, has pledged to cover the whole cost of the clean-up.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has been using C-130 Hercules aircraft flying from Darwin each day to drop dispersant over the slick.
