Action item 14.33
Progress
Complete.
Approved by decision makers.
Recommendation implemented.
That prior to the grant of any further production approvals, criminal penalties for environmental harm under the Petroleum Act and Petroleum Environment Regulations be reviewed and increased in line with world-leading practice.
Completed
Department of Industry, Tourism and Trade
Action item update
Implementation
The Petroleum Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 was introduced in the Legislative Assembly on 12 October 2022, passed on 1 December 2022 and assented to on 16 December 2022. Refer to Special Gazette S64 published on 19 December 2022 on the Northern Territory Government website.
Amendments to the Petroleum Act 1984 and Petroleum (Environment) Regulations 2016 will result in the conversion of all offences to become compliant with Part IIAA of the Criminal Code Act 1993, significantly increase nearly all penalties and introduce new offences.
This approach creates consistency across the Territory’s statute book and provides clarity of the individual elements of each offence. It has also enabled a tiered structure for offences, meaning more serious offences require the prosecution to prove fault elements, whereas less serious, strict liability offences do not.
Revised penalty amounts have been informed by multiple pieces of legislation, spanning petroleum, mining and environmental law, including the Territory’s Environment Protection Act 2019. New penalty amounts are now either comparable with or exceed equivalent penalties across all Australian jurisdictions.
To increase environmental offences in the Petroleum Act 1984 a consequential amendment was required to ‘de-link’ the Petroleum Act from the Environmental Offences and Penalties Act 1996.
While the recommendation references only criminal penalties for environmental harm offences, to provide equity across the petroleum legislation, the bill goes further to increase nearly all penalties in the Act and Regulations.