- Australia’s offshore oil and gas regulator is asking for more information about BP’s controversial application to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight to help it decide whether the company’s environmental plan is acceptable.
- The new request for information is not an outright rejection or an invitation to resubmit the plan, so it does not appear to put the project any closer to rejection or acceptance, but environmental groups seize on the news to call for the regulator to terminate the drilling plans altogether.
- The regulator already had rejected two of BP's environmental plans for drilling in the Great Australian Bight, finding they did not meet regulatory requirements.