Fish eggs could be lost daily during oil production – ExxonMobil Consultant

Sep 19, 2023 ExxonMobil, News, Oil & Gas

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By Davina Bagot

Kaieteur News – Fishermen in Guyana have been complaining repeatedly about the low catch being experienced, which government has blamed on factors such as climate change and seasonal variations.

Though it may be a tough pill for some to swallow, ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) has confirmed that its operations are likely to affect fish and the livelihoods of fishermen, as studies conducted by the company’s Consultant, Environmental Resources Management (ERM) have concluded that the marine species could effectively turn broth during production activities.

During a recent stakeholder engagement, Kaieteur News asked the consultant on likely impacts to the country’s fisheries sector, amid a declining industry. Research by this publication found that the fishing and shrimp sector have reduced since 2019. Bank of Guyana (BoG) statistics reveal as follows for shrimp (in tonnes) 2019- 15,808, 2020- 13,543, 2021- 10,962 and in 2022- 10,214. Meanwhile, the Bank reported the following production of fish (in tonnes): 2019- 22,336, 2020- 19,993, 2021- 20,628, 2022- 23,389.

Notably, government has implemented new measures such as aquaculture or cage fishing to boost production numbers, as Exxon predicts likely harm to the sector. ERM’s Senior Project Manager and Technical Support, Jason Willey recently explained that during production activities offshore, the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels require sea water to be used as a cooling substance.  He also pointed out that the sea water is required on a “continuous basis” for this purpose.

More importantly, Willey, a biologist within the ERM team explained that thousands, if not millions of fish eggs could be lost in the process, should this activity occur during spawning or reproductive season. “If the intake occurs at a time when like a spawning event happens, let’s say like when the fish are reproducing, and a lot of eggs and a lot of larvae are in the water, there can be thousands lost, potentially many more than that,” he said.

The biologist added, “It also depends on how many of those eggs and larva a certain pecies produces. Some produce millions of eggs and larva per single female, some produce a handful so it’s a large number of eggs and larva that could potentially be lost.”

Be that as it may, Willey sought to polish his response by indicating that this does not mean Guyana could potentially lose thousands or millions of fish product on the market.

He explained, “What you have to understand is that does not mean, and I want to be very clear about this, that does not mean that millions of the adult fish that you see in the market are going to be lost and the reason why is because most of those eggs and larva that would be lost are lost naturally through natural reproduction so in many cases particularly with marine fish you may have an adult fish that produces, let’s say it produces 20,000 eggs, only maybe a handful of those survive to adulthood so you can have a large number of eggs and larva that are lost and have a very small impact on the adult population.”

He said there was currently no data to determine the exact number of eggs or larva that can be sucked into the pipe that is collecting sea water.  Willey also noted that the team was unable to determine the spawning season for fully marine species since there generally is not one. “When we are talking about the fully marine species there really isn’t a seasonal component to that because the marine environment is generally very stable in terms of water quality during the different seasons…so when we are talking about those highly migratory open water species, so the larger sharks, the tuna, the jacks, the mackerels they don’t really have a seasonal component to the reproduction,” he noted.

This means that those species as well as their offspring can be impacted at any time during oil production activities.  While fishermen have been casting blame on the recent startup of oil production offshore Guyana for their reduced catches, a study conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) found otherwise.

In May last year, Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha said the study concluded that the visible impacts to the local fisheries sector was merely as a result of climate change. According to him, “It’s not as a result of that (oil operations)…the report says about climate change and the fresh water that was responsible.” Despite repeated calls for the study to be made public, the document never made its way to light.

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Pic: Fish

Pic: Willey

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• Consultant, ExxonMobil, Government, oil, production

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