Int’l Expert finds no evidence that Exxon can prevent another Macondo disaster at Liza 1 Project

Aug 18, 2021 News

– Says company offering Guyana superficial safety plans

Kaieteur News – Contrary to what ExxonMobil, as well as the PPP/C Government, have been saying about the safety of operations 120 miles offshore, an international disaster expert says there is no evidence to suggest that Guyana has enough protective measures in place to contain a well blow out or a catastrophic oil spill at the Liza Phase One Project.

Robert Bea.

What is equally frightening to contemplate is the fact that the expert has found no evidence to suggest that ExxonMobil is doing enough to avoid a disaster that would replicate the dreaded Macondo tragedy, which saw a well blow out in 2010 that took the lives of 11 men aboard the Deepwater Horizon Rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Making these revelations was Petroleum engineer, Robert Bea, one of the industry’s masters in studying safety and disasters. In a special report that was released by The Guardian yesterday, Bea said his conclusions were made after examining ExxonMobil’s 500-page Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the Liza Project. Bea noted in his interview with The Guardian that the ExxonMobil document states: “Unplanned events, such as a large oil spill, are considered unlikely to occur because of the extensive preventative measures employed.”
Bea noted however that he is all too familiar with this type of jargon as he noted that it is similar to what British Petroleum said before there was the Macondo disaster. He said BP’s original plans for the Macondo well stated, it is “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities.” Asked if such contentions are “typical” in offshore drilling, the Petroleum engineer told The Guardian, “absolutely not!” Rather, he says, they reveal “ignorance of risk management fundamentals.”
Bea’s conclusion was treated with the highest regard since he worked for Shell Oil before becoming one of the world’s premier safety and disaster investigators and served as a principal investigator on the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Piper Alpha offshore oil disaster that killed 167 men in the North Sea, the Exxon Valdez grounding and the crash of the Nasa Columbia space shuttle.
Given his extensive knowledge and his analysis of more than 1,000 pages of submissions by Exxon, as well as government permits for the Liza One Project, Bea concluded: “We could have a problem similar to what we had with BP before and after the Macondo disaster.”
Significantly, he said he found no evidence of the necessary planning and operations needed to “assess and manage the risks associated with high risk offshore exploration, production, and transportation operations.” The industry expert said Exxon is instead offering superficial safety plans based on unsubstantiated claims of its capabilities in Guyana that fail to take account of the highly hazardous risks associated with its operations, he said.
The international expert said, “There are loose ends, assumptions, and premises that are not substantiated in Exxon’s plans. And the more of these threads that you tug at, the more concerned you become that what’s being done here is superficial.”
In particular, Bea told the Guardian that he is worried about a loss of well control, or blowout – which could cause a catastrophic oil spill. In this regard, he finds that Exxon has not kept the risks of such events as low as “reasonably practicable,” based on the documents he reviewed.
Furthermore, Bea cited numerous problems with Exxon’s plans. One key aspect he pointed out is that ExxonMobil claims if a blowout occurs in Guyana, it would be contained within 21 to 30 days. However, Bea unequivocally stated that this estimate is “far too optimistic, unsubstantiated and improbable.”
The Guardian was keen to note that Exxon did not respond to the specific claims made by Bea, and other persons it referenced in the article. Exxon did note however that it has adhered to Guyanese laws and instituted “robust compliance assurance systems that enable identification and timely reporting of operational issues with the Environmental Protection Agency and Ministry of Natural Resources’’ of Guyana. It said too that the Guyana government did not respond to requests for comment.

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Robert Bea–The Master of Disaster!
Robert Bea has been called the Master of Disaster. This professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering studies failures – both engineering and human – in hopes the world can learn from them. Think Deepwater Horizon, Hurricane Katrina and the space shuttle Columbia. At 81, he has retired from teaching, but he remains keyed in to current risks. He has been monitoring the fragile 1,100-mile levee system in the California Delta, which funnels drinking water to 25 million Californians, and he has spoken out about the risks of catastrophic failure posed by cracks in the Oroville Dam spillway.
Bea, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, has garnered multiple awards throughout his career in the fields of civil and ocean engineering. For his work in helping the people of Louisiana after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which spilled more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Bea was recognized by the U.S. Senate.