By Jeanavive McGregor

The West Atlas oil rig after the fire had been extinguished.

An oil rig that was leaking an estimated 400 barrels a day into the Timor Sea was finally plugged in early November, but the incident has raised questions about the production of oil and gas in important environmental areas.

Two reports, one released by the Government and another by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found marine life interacting with the spill, and said the situation is a massive environmental disaster that is still unfolding.

Dr Gilly Llewellyn, the WWF’s director of conservation, led the team of ecologists that conducted a survey of the impact of the spill in September. She found a region rich in wildlife, sighting seabirds, dolphins, sea snakes and turtles in the six day trip from Darwin to the West Atlas oil rig.

“It was just sickening … to think about the wildlife that was out there and being exposed to the oil,” she said.

The Government’s report also found large numbers of whales, dolphins, turtles and sea birds were feeding in the oil, saying that the marine life is likely to be at “immediate risk” from the spill.

The WWF found 17 dead sea birds and a dead sea snake during the survey, all showing signs of exposure to oil. Both reports stress that while there are clear short term affects on marine life, the chronic long-term impact needs to be monitored.

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The Government has now announced a Senate inquiry into the spill, which has so far cost $5 million to clean up. The former secretary of the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, David Borthwick will lead the inquiry.

Greens senator Rachel Siewert has been pushing for more information about the spill since the leak began. She is critical of the Government’s response to the spill and thinks that it should be looked at in the inquiry.

“It took the World Wildlife Fund going out first for the Government to even put a boat in the water,” she said.

“There was a reluctance to acknowledge the full extent of the spill, there was an attempt to downplay it and implying that it’s out there its offshore, its out in the middle of nowhere its not going to have an impact.”

Siewert believed oil and gas exploration should not be allowed off the Kimberly coast until there are safeguards in place to protect them.

Llewellyn said the world is watching with interest about what this might mean for future oil and gas developments.

“These are extremely sensitive and fragile marine habitats. Should we have even more stringent safeguards? Should there be areas that are so important that we say that they are off limits to oil and gas?” she said.

Professor John Buckeridge is a biologist and natural resources expert at RMIT University in Melbourne. He said the world’s hunger for oil means the environment will continue to be compromised by risky oil and gas exploration.

“We are at a stage now where all the easy oil fields have been tapped, the ones we can easily control have been tapped, what we are now looking at are ones that on the whole are more difficult terrains, ones that are in areas that are highly faulted and areas that in fact we don’t necessarily understand or appreciate how they are going to respond,” he said.