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EPA to beef up monitoring of oil sector with more offshore visits
Kaieteur News – Amid concerns that the offshore operations of oil companies are not being monitored, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has assured that mechanisms are in place to ensure there is adequate oversight of the sector.
Executive Director the regulatory body, Kemraj Parsram in a recent interview with Kaieteur News explained that the agency has been utilising the latest technology to conduct remote monitoring of ExxonMobil’s oil and gas activities. “We have our remote, real time monitoring capabilities which we can see real-time live what’s happening in terms of any discharges or what’s not. We get real time notifications of any unwanted discharges or pollution events,” Parsram told the Kaieteur News.
Executive Director the EPA, Kemraj Parsram
In addition, the EPA head pointed out that the officers attached to the body also conducts intermittent inspections for audits, which is acceptable internationally. While there has been a call for Guyanese to have a presence on the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels currently operating in the Liza One and Liza Two Fields, Parsram said he is unaware of such a system. “I am not aware of any regulatory body having 24 hours presence on board on FPSOs,” he noted. In fact, the EPA head said BSEE, a United States regulatory body would do inspections periodically.
A third mechanism currently employed by the regulator is the requirement for daily reporting by Exxon. Parsram said that the Permit Holder is mandated to issue daily, monthly, quarterly and annual reports on the operations. In the meantime, the Executive Director said the body is in the process of beefing up its monitoring capabilities with more visits to the FPSOs. He said it is yet to be determined how frequent these visits will be conducted in the future.
Concerns have been raised in the past about the EPA’s monitoring capabilities of the offshore oil and gas activities. In February, the Government of Guyana through the EPA entered a US$550,000 ($116M) three-year deal with MAXAR Technologies to boost its capabilities in monitoring oil operations offshore and even onshore activities in the country’s forest.
Maxar Technologies is an American Company based in Westminster, Colorado, United States of America (USA) that specializes in manufacturing communication, earth observation, radar, and on-orbit servicing satellites, satellite products and related services. At a simple launching ceremony at the agency’s Sophia, Georgetown office, Parsram said, “This approach now strengthens and supports our capacity building and bolstering our man power to conduct physical in person inspections and monitoring (of oil operations offshore). Yes, we do physical inspections. I don’t believe it’s necessary to have 24/7 presence but rather intermittent and regular inspections.”
The deal allows EPA to receive daily satellite imagery intakes across the country through the SecureWatch platform, vessel alerts through the Crow’s Nest Maritime solution, SAR oil spill detection services, and change monitoring over specified areas of interest.
This simply means that the EPA can now detect oil spills remotely, flaring and even track vessel movements offshore through high resolution satellite imagery and analytics.
- EPA, Monitoring, oil, real-time, remote
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