The increased demand for energy, stimulating exploration, production and processing of crude oil or gas, brings with it a number of risks including:
Contact: Richard Foxall
Telephone: (08) 9289 3803
Technology is allowing exploration in more challenging and hostile environments. Well blow-out resulting in the uncontrolled flow of hydrocarbons, water or drilling fluids and the ensuing risk of pollution emanating from the well bore has been an ever-present risk for oil and gas exploration and production companies. The cost of drilling oil and gas wells has reached unprecedented levels. The cost of bringing well blow-outs under control and dealing with the clean-up and claims resulting from pollutants can be substantially greater than the original cost, particularly when added to the cost of redrilling the well after it has been brought under control. Government legislation requires exploration and production companies to insure
these exposures.
Contact: Richard Foxall
Telephone: (08) 9289 3803
Contact: Stephen Walker
Telephone:
(08) 9289 3827
Engineering advances allow exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves in deeper water. Previously marginal fields are now being developed by the use of sub-sea and mobile production equipment, increasing the risks associated with offshore construction and development.
Contact: Richard Foxall
Telephone: (08) 9289 3803
Traditional steel and concrete production platforms which previously required substantial capacity commitments from the insurance markets are being supplemented with lower value subsea and floating production systems allowing production in unprecedented water depths and climatically hostile frontiers.
Contact: Martin Phelan
Telephone: (03) 9603 2143
Exploration frontiers are being expanded internationally with commensurate political risks, such as confiscation, expropriation and nationalisation.
Contact: Stephen Walker
Telephone: (08) 9289 3827
Contact: Richard Foxall
Telephone: (08) 9289 3803
While crude oil is the traditional feedstock of the petroleum refining and petrochemical industries, gas is a vital raw material in the development of downstream manufacturing of products such as LPG, fertilisers, methane and clean fuels such as diesel. The Northwest and Midwest of Western Australia and Darwin are the proposed sites for several innovative manufacturing developments using the vast offshore gas resources as a raw material. Oil and gas “downstream” construction and development can be as valuable and as vulnerable to the whole range of natural and economic risks as equivalent upstream developments.
Contact: Glenn Preece
Telephone: (02) 8864 8315
Pipelines needed to fuel industrial and domestic demand are proliferating in Australia. The oil and gas transmission industry has refined technology so that breaches in pipelines can be repaired at relatively low cost. However, pipelines can be damaged as a result natural perils such as cyclone, earthquake, flood or bushfire. Such damages may be on a catastrophic scale and over great distances. Damage to compressor stations resulting from natural or operational perils such as fire, machinery breakdown, or communications failure also represent a real and substantial peril.
Contact: Glenn Preece
Telephone: (02) 8864 8315
The hydrocarbon industry is the most capital-intensive of any industry. This coupled with the volatility of its raw materials and finished products produces physical and financial exposures of almost unparalleled magnitude.
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