The Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act 2000

The main features of the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act 2000 are:

- Establishment of a co-regulatory regime focused on achieving environmental, public safety and resource management objectives, and reduced compliance costs
- Licence allocation and management mechanisms to facilitate competition in line with competition policy principles
- Rights of third party access to licenced pipelines (where not covered by the national access regime), to depleted reservoirs (for gas storage purposes), and to pipeline easements
- Greater security of tenure for licences through improved registration procedures
- Public consultation processes with regard to establishment of environmental objectives and for significant proposed activities (consistent with provisions of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016)
- Reduced risk to government for liabilities arising from the activities of the industry
- A fee structure designed to encourage the industry to adopt management systems to undertake activities
- Inclusion of an effective and expeditious regulatory and approvals framework applicable to geothermal and gas storage activities.

The Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Regulations 2013 provides additional rules in addition to the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act 2000. Such rules include licence applications, environment protection, operator classification and activity notification, notice of entry on land, operational issues, reports and information. 

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