Fighting for the bight

“There’s magic there”: the Great Australian
 Bight from the Bunda Cliffs.

Two months ago, I had never heard the phrase “Fight for the Bight.” Now I seem to see it everywhere. Last week, as I walked past a shop near my home on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, there it was again on a poster in the window: Fight for the Bight.

The fight is about natural gas extraction in the Great Australian Bight. For several years, oil companies, including BP and Chevron, have signalled interest in drilling under the bight to confirm the existence of untold mineral riches. Equinor, a Norwegian oil and gas company, plans to begin exploratory drilling by 2021, pending final permission from the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, or NOPSEMA, a statutory Commonwealth agency.

Read the Inside Story by Seumas Spark - “Fighting for the bight.”