Power of the Australian Government to Intervene in Oil Spills
Article from: OGEL 3 (2010), in Oil Spills
Introduction
This short note focuses on whether the Australian Government has remedial power in the event of an oil spill occurring, rather than on preventative measures. In other words, we are concerned here with what happens if "the worst comes to the worst". In the aftermath of the BP Macondo oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico on 22 April 2010, the question of whether governments can intervene to compel a petroleum producer to expeditiously clean up an oil spill is of great concern to many communities. It is now apparent that some governments do not have the ...