Govt. ‘hiding’ of flaring data highly suspicious – Former EPA Head

Dec 31, 2022 News

---

Kaieteur News – Petroleum Engineer, Dr. Vincent Adams believes that the withholding of flaring data on the Ministry of Natural Resource’s website, is ‘highly suspicious’ and must be clarified by the Government.

“It is rather suspicious that they are issuing all of the other data, [including] the production of fluids but they are not saying how much they are flaring which is important. It begs the question, why are they hiding that data,” Dr. Adams told Kaieteur News.

Adams, the former Head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) explained that during oil production, each barrel that is pumped, also brings produced water and associated gas.

While data is published for the amount of gas produced daily as well as statistics on produced water, the Government has not updated the chart that depicts the amount of gas flared, re-injected, and used for energy by the developer since July 12, 2022.

“All of the production data are registered and recorded at the same time. Every barrel of oil that comes up, whatever is recorded, also tells you how much gas comes with it and they have got to account for that gas. They have a gas handling system so they know how much gas is coming up, they know exactly how much gas is being used for energy consumption on the ship, they know how much gas is re-injected and they know how much is being flared so why aren’t they publishing that data but they are publishing everything else?” Dr Adams said.

The Specialist with over 40 years of experience in the petroleum sector said he believes the Government received the data from U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, but are simply refusing to share this with the public.

“It’s suspicious. It is highly suspicious and it goes back again to their modus operandi of not being transparent at both ends. The oil company – the Government is allowing them to get away with it. Now based on the report now, apparently that data is being fed to the Government and that website, it is managed by the Government, so why aren’t they releasing that data? I can’t see how all of the data is being reported to them but they are not publishing a specific part. The Government says they have got to review the data before they publish it, so what are they reviewing? Why aren’t they publishing this gas data to tell us how much is being flared specifically?,” the Petroleum Engineer questioned.

Dr. Adams explained that the oil company has constantly encountered issues with its compressor, leading to excessive flaring of gas since the start-up of oil production in 2019.  In fact, he reminded that after the compressor woes were finally addressed in July of this year, the oil company promised to cut back on flaring.

Interestingly enough, after this announcement, Government never released updated statistics regarding the levels of flaring. As such, Dr. Adams reasoned, “Flaring has always been a major concern because it damages the environment so they (Government) needs to come clean and tell us exactly what is going on. Who knows if their equipment is down again? For all I know they could be flaring everything.”

The Petroleum Engineer was keen to point out that while the oil company has reportedly fixed its gas compressor, this does not mean there will be no flaring of associated gas offshore.

He made it clear, “They always have to flare because they have to keep the pilot burning. They flare about half of a million cubic feet of gas per day. The compressor doesn’t have to do with the flaring, it has to do with the re-injection of the gas so when the compressor was down they were flaring all of it because they can’t re-inject it.”

On Thursday, Kaieteur News reported that after months of demanding that the oil production data be shared with the public, the Government finally directed the media to a website in August to access the information, usually updated at the end of every month.

Notably, this website provides key updates on the number of barrels of oil produced at the Liza One and Liza Two operations in the Stabroek Block, as well as the daily reported amount of gas produced, gas injected, flared gas and gas used for fuel. It also gives an overview on the Brent Crude prices and the amount of water produced and injected.

While data as recent as November 30, 2022 is available for public scrutiny on all the other aspects of oil production, flaring statistics for the past four months have not been uploaded to the portal. In fact, the last published gas data on the site is dated July 12, 2022. Nonetheless, data was uploaded that depicts the amount of gas produced daily during the offshore production of oil in the Stabroek Block.

It is unclear as to why the flaring statistics are not being made public as Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, has still not responded to queries relating to the issue.

Flaring is the process of burning associated gas that is brought up during oil production. Notably, this process emits harmful gases into the atmosphere that may not only affect seabirds and marine creatures, but also climate change.

---

---