OFFSHORE MINERALS ACT 1994 - SECT 13 Commonwealth - State offshore areas

OFFSHORE MINERALS ACT 1994 - SECT 13

  (1)   The Commonwealth - State offshore area for a State is the area that is the offshore area for the State for the purposes of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 .

Note 1 :   The offshore area   for the purposes of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 is worked out by taking an area off the coast of the State that is described in Schedule   1 to that Act and then excluding all waters within a line 3 nautical miles seaward of the territorial sea baseline and also excluding any areas that are beyond the outer limits of the Continental Shelf. The map in subsection   6(3) of that Act illustrates the offshore areas.

Note 2:   Neither of the following areas described in the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 is an offshore area of a State:

(a)   the Bayu - Undan pipeline international offshore area;

(b)   the Greater Sunrise pipeline international offshore area.

  (2)   The following diagram illustrates how a Commonwealth - State offshore area relates to:

  (a)   the territorial sea baseline; and

  (b)   the 3 nautical mile limit (the outer limit of the State's coastal waters); and

  (c)   the 12 nautical mile limit (the outer limit of the territorial sea); and

  (d)   the outer limits of the Continental Shelf.

Note 1:   For the baseline see Australia 's territorial sea baseline (AGPS) 1988: generally the baseline is the lowest astronomical tide along the coast but it also includes lines enclosing bays and indentations that are not bays and straight baselines that depart from the coast.

Note 2:   The Continental Shelf in a legal sense starts not from the coast but from the outer limits of the territorial sea. In a geophysical sense, of course, the continental shelf starts at the coast. The diagram shows the outer edge of the continental margin as the limit of the Continental Shelf but sometimes the 200 nautical mile limit defines the limit of the Continental Shelf.

Note 3:   Sometimes the outer limit of the Commonwealth - State offshore area is a bilaterally negotiated boundary or a median line adopted pending bilateral negotiations.