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EPA now building capacity to estimate financial impacts of oil spill
Kaieteur News – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has commenced training to be able to independently determine the economic impacts that can be caused by an oil spill.
In a brief update posted on its Facebook page on October 9, 2023, the regulatory body indicated that an international third-party consultant has been working with its officers to build capacity on “how to estimate the financial impact/cost of an oil spill to Guyana based on a worst-case scenario.”
The agency said its objective is to be armed with the necessary in-house capabilities to conduct a similar estimation across all sectors or departments. To this end, it said the workshop was open for attendance by all technical departments. EPA did not indicate, which consultancy firm was hired to aid in the capacity building programme nor did it highlight the technical departments that participated in the training exercise.
In the meantime, it was reported last week that Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton called for an economic assessment to be conducted to determine the likely financial devastation that can be caused by an oil spill that occurs in the Stabroek Block.
He noted, “You cannot operate such a mammoth industry without proper economic analysis.” The Leader said the study is particularly important even as Guyana prepares for further exploration at other oil blocks.
Officials from the EPA engaged in the workshop (Photo credit: EPA)
In September, Kaieteur News reported that four months after the President of Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM), Darren Woods urged shareholders of the fortune 500 company to vote against a petition calling for a thorough study on the economic impacts of an oil spill from the Stabroek Block, the company’s consultant; Environmental Resources Management (ERM) revealed that no such assessment was ever conducted.
Woods had called on the shareholders of the company to vote against the proposal since he believes there were adequate studies already done to determine impacts to the Region. ERM’s Socioeconomic Resources / Stakeholder Engagement Specialist, Anna Sundby, however during a public consultation hosted at the Leonora Technical Institute, West Coast Demerara, revealed that no such financial study was ever done in Guyana. She was at the time responding to a question from Kaieteur News on what the likely devastation of an oil spill at the sixth project could cost.
Sundby in response explained, “I can’t say because it’s not part of the EIA. We haven’t done an economic model of what the maximum economic impact would be. What we focus on with the unplanned events chapter is identifying what the risk of those scenarios are, so we can put the right measures in place to manage that risk and so that really comes down to the oil spill response plan.”
Following up, Kaieteur News asked the consultant if such an assessment was ever conducted in prior EIAs or separately to underline the cost associated with a spill that can occur at any of the deepwater projects. To this end, Sundby explained that ERM has never undertaken such a task, since evaluating the cost of a spill is not ideally part of an EIA.
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