What it does
The Petroleum (Submerged Lands) Act 1982 (WA) is the Western Australian statute governing petroleum exploration and production in the State's adjacent offshore area. It establishes the licensing regime through which companies may search for and extract petroleum from the seabed and subsoil of the offshore zone administered by WA.
The Act operates within a broader national framework for offshore petroleum regulation. It was enacted pursuant to an intergovernmental agreement between the Commonwealth, States and the Northern Territory for the cooperative regulation of offshore petroleum activities. Under this framework, each State enacted corresponding legislation, and the Commonwealth enacted Commonwealth legislation (originally the Petroleum (Submerged Lands) Act 1967 (Cth), later succeeded by the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 (Cth)).
The WA adjacent area (called "the adjacent area" in the Act) is the offshore zone to which the Act applies: broadly, the area of WA's continental shelf within the defined boundary in Schedule 2, lying within the territorial sea of Australia (s 4). The Convention on the Continental Shelf (1958) is the foundational international law instrument referenced in the definitions (s 4).
The Act is very large (nearly 900k chars) and contains detailed provisions for each licence type, the conditions applying to it, and the obligations of titleholders.