Santos Tour Down Under: Why fossil fuel companies should be best known for their pollution, not their sponsorships

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Santos? If you’re a cycling fan or an Adelaide local, it might be the Tour Down Under – the pro-cycling race happening this month in South Australia of which Santos is the major sponsor. 

However the fossil fuel company got far less attention for another big event that took place earlier this month: a court date for an oil spill that took place a few years ago.

Santos: Spiller Down Under

On January 6 2025, Santos pleaded guilty and was convicted of substandard operations leading to an oil spill in 2022 off the coast of Western Australia, where 25,000 litres of oil were released into the Indian Ocean.  The spill took place in waters which hold significant cultural importance for the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people. Dead dolphins and other sea creatures were also found in the affected area shortly after the oil spill. For all of this damage the multi-billion dollar corporation was fined a measly $10,000 – nothing but a slap on the wrist. 

For comparison, the maximum fine for an individual person in South Australia dumping only 50L worth of litter is up to $30,000, or 6 months in jail. Why are multi-billion dollar corporations allowed to get away with this? 

This oil spill in 2022 is just one example on a long list of spills, leaks, and explosions on Santos projects that have harmed workers, marine life, and the environment. 

In January 2023 another pipeline in South Australia had a major explosion. And in 2011 Santos was fined for breaching workplace safety laws after an explosion at the Moomba gas plant, on New Year’s Day in 2004. Come to think about it, this year’s fine was also a few days after new years in 2025. Are court cases and exploding pipelines becoming a new years tradition for the Adelaide headquartered company? 

Also in 2023, a terrifying video from a Santos offshore gas project in WA shows several rope access technicians narrowly missing serious injury or death after a lift went badly wrong.

We could go on, but we’ll stop there for today.

The Great Cover Up: community sponsorships

The reason that major companies like Santos are sponsoring community events like the Tour Down Under is to bolster their reputation. They’ll go to great lengths to be associated with ‘helping out the community’ – almost as great as the lengths they will go to cover up their environmental damage. 

When Santos spilled 25,000L of oil into the ocean in 2022, they failed to report it. A year later, an anonymous whistleblower accused Santos of a coverup.

“In defiance of their obligations, Santos had not mobilised environmental assessors to the island until a week after the incident,” said the whistleblower. “They could not have known the real scale of impact, it was never checked.” He also noted that he “was appalled at the culture and management within Santos, which demonstrated such wilful refusal to accept responsibility.”

Santos is not an anomaly. Many fossil fuel corporations have spills and explosions that they try to evade responsibility for, including Woodside – who now wants to be trusted to drill for gas near Scott Reef, threatening endangered whales, turtles, and sea snakes. 

Companies like Santos and Woodside frequently sponsor community events because doing so buys them power. It smooths the way to their project approvals, and it makes communities reliant on the very fossil fuel companies who are responsible for the huge costs that then fall on communities when they have to clean up after environmental or climate disasters.

Fossil fuel companies like Santos are making climate change worse

It’s not just Santos’ spills and explosions that are causing harm, it’s the fossil fuels it produces for a profit.  

Just 78 companies and state entities are responsible for over 70% of the toxic carbon pollution that’s driving climate change, but they’re leaving the rest of us to foot the bill for the massive cost of disasters they’ve helped to cause. Everyday Australians are currently paying $13 billion per year to clean up the impacts of climate change.

Let’s not forget that in 2022 alone, Santos raked in over US$3.8 billion.

We shouldn’t let billion-dollar companies profit off polluting while buying back social license from sponsoring local swim teams and sports competitions. Coal, oil and gas companies are the biggest contributors to climate change. They cause the damage – they should be paying to fix it.