Latest update February 10th, 2025 7:48 AM
It’s cheaper to dump produced water than to re-inject – Exxon tells EPA
US$1.8T Yellowtail Project…
Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), has told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that it intends to dump produced water from the Yellowtail Project into the ocean. It said this is the preferred choice since reinjection is an “economically inferior” option.
ExxonMobil’s Guyana President, Alistair Routledge
EEPGL informed the EPA of this plan of action via its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for its fourth project in the Stabroek Block which comes on stream by 2026. The document notes that produced water is the liquid that comes up a well during the extraction of oil and gas. It is usually high in salinity.
EEPGL noted that there are two primary options for the disposal of produced water: it can either be treated and discharged overboard or it can be combined with seawater and re-injected into the earth’s surface.
The subsidiary was keen to note that “overboard discharge of treated produced water was selected for the Yellowtail Development Project based on a best available technology (BAT) analysis.” It also determined that the potential environmental impacts on water quality from overboard discharge of treated produced water would be negligible.
Furthermore, the oil company said a produced water treatment system for the Yellowtail project will be designed to collect the substance, treat it and then discharge overboard. It said the produced water treatment system will be maintained and operated to maximise oil recovery from the produced water prior to discharge. EEPGL said produced water that does not meet the overboard discharge specification after treatment will be routed to an appropriate tank in the hull of the Yellowtail’s floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) and managed.
Back in 2020, EEPGL’s Country Manager, Alistair Routledge, had proffered a similar defence when the company was heavily criticised for refusing to reinject produced water for its US$9B Payara project. Routledge had posited that the oil giant wants to continue with its mode of operation which is to dump the produced water since it “is treated and has no effect on the environment.”
Even though Routledge claimed then and continues to maintain the position that there are no effects of treated water being dumped into the ocean, there is no such information supporting this in the EPA’s possession. Not a single study was ever commissioned to determine this as well for the Liza Phase One, Two and Payara Projects, all of which will be dumping millions of barrels of water with high salinity into the ocean.
Kaieteur News had noted in previous publications that international best practices dictate that produced water should be re-injected into the earth’s surface. Because no two geographic regions are alike, there is a plethora of material that categorically state that studies should be done to assess the environmental risks of the produced water’s toxicity on marine life before granting approval for the disposal of it into the ocean.
Further research also notes that produced water is regarded as a high-volume toxic waste. It was also noted that the treatment of produced water is very important hence there would be a need for regulatory bodies to ascertain if the appropriate technologies are being utilised in the treatment process and for a further study to be done to understand the effects of the treated water on the environment. Kaieteur News was also able to confirm that the EPA does not know what technologies are being used by ExxonMobil in this regard.
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