Origin managing director Grant King’s defence mounted last week after sister publication Energy News reported on an internal company audit from 2013 revealing a litany of compliance issues across its oil and gas fields in Australia and New Zealand which senior executives said could take years to bring back up to standard.
The report was leaked to The Australian, which subsequently published the whole report online.
This followed claims made by former compliance manager Sally McDow alleging Origin had bullied and sacked her after claiming to partake in what she believes was a “cover-up” of compliance issues including oil and gas leaks.
Origin has denied her allegations, and yesterday King came out publicly defending the company on the compliance front and specifically addressed McDow’s allegations.
He said the reports presented an “incomplete picture” of Origin’s internal compliance processes.
“We have robust compliance processes and reject any inference to the contrary,” King said.
“We engage openly and regularly with regulators via dedicated teams and we are confident that there has been no breach of an external compliance reporting obligation. We regularly audit our compliance processes and cooperate with audits by regulators.
“We welcome any further reviews by regulators into our reporting obligations.
“We note the allegations about the company’s governance and regulatory compliance processes have been made by a former employee in the context of legal action relating to a breach of workplace protection rights under the Fair Work Act.
“When the claimant raised concerns, they were considered in a thorough and respectful way, and independently investigated at Origin’s instigation.
“Three separate investigations were conducted by external specialist consultancies, and each reported that the concerns were not substantiated.
“Origin is defending the claim and will file a defence in due course. Out of respect to the court process and the claimant, we will confine our comments on the matter to the appropriate forum of the court.”
Proving the old adage that when it rains it pours, The Australian this morning published revelations from another internal “deep dive” review circulated to senior Origin management in August last year.
“There has been a culture of accepting low-level non-compliance on the basis of the cost to rectify, pending sale of assets and/or because there has been a history of compliance not being enforced by the regulator,” the report said, citing, for example, the non-compliant ponds at Kincora and Surat.
“There has been a culture of accepting environmental risks (such as well integrity and protecting assets when shutting in) because of cost to rectify, pending sale of assets and/or there has been few serious incidents.
“Evidence shows that not all non-compliances are being reported to the regulators (eg. Annual Performance Statement for Lang Lang did not disclose all environmental non-compliances).”
LNG delays
On top of all that, Origin has also assured the market that it is close to shipping the first cargo from its $24.7 billion APLNG, despite Origin announcing with great fanfare last month that it had become the third of Gladstone’s mega-projects to start production.
Fairfax said this morning that Origin was believed to be “just days” away from shipping its first cargo from APLNG, after live ship tracking on Reuters Eikon revealed that Sinopec’s chartered LNG tanker BW Pavilion Vanda arrived at the Gladstone anchorage on December 18 but was yet to load a cargo.
This was believed to be racking up demurrage costs of more than $500,000 for offtake customer Sinopec in the 18 days the ship had been anchored off Gladstone.
