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EPA Head now in the moving business

Aug 27, 2022 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Kaieteur News – We have no quarrel with the Executive Director of this country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  We take no delight in hauling him over the coals on what we believe that the EPA has been negligent and is currently still lagging.  For it is with the local EPA, as led by its Head, that the safety and security of Guyanese reside.  It is not merely environmental safety, but also the financial security of future Guyanese generations, and though we shudder to think of it, the livelihood of our CARICOM neighbours also.  It involves this burning, boiling, overflowing issue of full liability coverage in the event of a catastrophic oil spill in our offshore oil operations.  As much as we may hope, or fool ourselves into thinking so, it is not a nonexistent possibility, or a remote one.

Taking all this consideration, it is surprising, shocking indeed, that the EPA Head has gone to the step of having a file cabinet with production reports handed over by ExxonMobil relocated to his office.  The monthly production reports submitted by the ExxonMobil, once they are about the real truth, have a lot of meaning, on what the companies are doing offshore.  It involves money, and it encircles the safety that we spoke of above.

Money means how much we should be getting as our measly share of royalties and profits.  We have no idea if ExxonMobil is being straight with us, or cheating us.  Also, we should bear in mind that these monthly production reports are based entirely on what ExxonMobil says is the result of its pumping operations.  Our oil could be gushing into tankers beyond what ExxonMobil has been saying, and we are none the wiser for all that is happening.  This leaves the oil companies in the driver’s seat, and Guyana in the position of roadkill.  ExxonMobil could be bleeding us of money, and we are clueless.  Now the EPA Head has put the production reports under lock, with the keys in his hands only.  This is not confidence-inducing.

Regarding safety, a careful  review of the monthly production reports should indicate daily oil output levels, and the safety limits observed by ExxonMobil.  In other words, any sensible examination of those production reports must be looking for how much stress is being placed on the offshore facilities in the rush to ramp up production.  We have heard about 120,000 barrels being considered the acceptable safety limit, and we have also heard of 140,000 barrels being pumped, which clearly is throwing caution to the winds.  As to occasions when ExxonMobil may have possibly gone even beyond that, we don’t know, for we removed the monitoring people.

Now, oil companies are profit focused and profit driven, and have long displayed that they are not squeamish where making money is concerned, and in the shortest time.  For sure, they are greedy enough to take chances, and with Guyana’s very cheap oil (and no oversight of substance) as incentive, there is nothing preventing them from capitalising on the situation. These could stress safe production limits dangerously, leaving this country highly exposed to a disastrous oil spill.

This is where those production reports, hopefully accurate and trustworthy, come into play.  Further, it is what frowns upon the action of the EPA Head in moving that file cabinet to his space.  Because this puts it in less than an innocent administrative light.  It does seem too much on the guarded side, as if these monthly production reports have now risen to the level of national security secrets.  We wish we were not put in the position of having to say this, but past postures and actions of the EPA, under the guidance and decisions of its current Head, have not urged us to be in his corner.

We think of impact assessments (never needed), permits (inexplicably approved), and ongoing public disputes about discussions over the most sensitive issue of full liability coverage for a frightening oil spill.  In all these situations, we don’t think that the Head of Guyana’s EPA has been our staunchest defender, our boldest warrior.  Yet, he can be energetic and driven when he chooses to, as is now obvious with moving this file cabinet housing production reports.

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