Northern Territory engineering company, Universal Engineering, has gone into voluntary liquidation as a result of financial exposure to the Montara oil spill  in the Timor Sea nineteen months ago.

 

Universal Engineering was unable to retrieve most of the $500,000 owing to it after the Bangkok-based  company PTTEP was responsible for the massive oil spill of Australia’s north-west coast.

 

Universal was established by Steve Tiley in 1995 and has undertaken Defence work as well  as contracts for the oil and gas industry.  Currently employing 20 staff, the company was forced to lay off 16 apprentices last year.

 

Universal Engineering is the second company to hit the wall as a result of the Montara oil spill, the first being Darwin steel firm Transcon  which collapsed in March last year with debts of $5.5 million.

 

Meanwhile, PTTEP has made an application to the Federal Government  to drill  two exploration wells, the Kingtree-1 and Ironstone-1 wells, in the Timor Sea.  A report in The Australian yesterday noted that PTTEP, in its application document, admitted that the 2009 spill may have been worse than had been thought, with as much as 1500 barrels per day being released into the ocean in the early stages of the incident. The spill lasted for ten weeks, and was estimated to have spilt 400 barrels per day over that period.

 

An independent review of the spill and PTTEP’s management practices, released in February this year, resulted in a deed of agreement between the Federal Government and PTTEP which requires PTTEP to implement the Montara Action Plan and arrangements for an18 month monitoring program. According to the independent reviewer, Noetic Solutions Pty Ltd,  the action plan “sets PTTEP Australasia on the path to achieving industry best practice standards for both good oil field practice and good governance”.

 

More information about the Montara Commission of Inquiry is at http://www.montarainquiry.gov.au/