EPA must develop capacity to monitor dumping of toxic water from oil ships – Guyanese Scientist Dr. Trotz

May 08, 2024 ExxonMobil, News, Oil & Gas

---

…says Guyana’s marine eco-systems could be devastated by failure to adhere to robust standards

By Davina Bagot

Kaieteur News – International oil and gas companies are renowned for cutting corners in countries that lack basic monitoring capabilities, but as a major contributor now to the global petroleum market, Guyana must ensure the operators adhere to robust standards to protect its marine eco-systems.

This was recently stressed by Dr. Ulric Trotz during an interview with Kaieteur News on the sidelines of an event hosted by the Guyana Press Association (GPA) at Moray House, Camp Street, Georgetown in observance of World Press Freedom Day.

The Scientist who served as Dean, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Guyana and former Director of the Institute of Applied Science and Technology is renowned for his contributions to the fight against Climate Change. Since 1997 Dr. Trotz has been giving direction to the Caribbean Region’s efforts to build capacity for Climate Change Adaptation.

He was asked by this newspaper to give his views on the dumping of produced water by the operator of Guyana’s Stabroek Block, ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL), which is currently producing approximately 645,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) from three Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels.

Produced water is a liquid that is extracted during oil production activities. It contains dissolved mineral salts, or may be mixed with organic compounds such as acids, waxes, and mineral oils. It may also be mixed with inorganic metals and byproducts or with trace amounts of heavy metals and naturally-occurring radioactive materials, the US Department of Energy said in a research paper. It is also usually very high in temperature, and can be deadly to marine organisms.

Due to its toxicity, this substance is best re-injected into the wells, though this may be a costly exercise. The Permits granted to Exxon by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) however requires the operator to treat the substance to ensure “oil content specification of produced water to be discharged does not exceed 42 mg/l on a daily basis or 29 mg/l on a monthly average”.

Former Head of the EPA, Dr. Vincent Adams had warned that the accumulated dumping of produced water can have dangerous impacts on both marine and human life.

Dr. Trotz in an invited comment elaborated on the dangers posed by the dumping of produced water. “Any sort of contamination in a pristine marine environment that provides so much to our livelihoods, our fisher folk, so much to our own nutritional diet with our dependence on marine sources for protein, for an environment that supports marine life, you think about turtle nesting facilities on Shell Beach- anything that disturbs that environment is not in our interest.”

To this end, Dr. Trotz explained, “If there are international regulations that stipulate that what is being injected into our marine environment basically complies with international practice and in no way undermines the integrity of our marine eco-system then that’s alright.”

He, however, pointed out that key to the safety of the environment is monitoring the discharges.

“Do we have in place the sort of capacity to monitor what Exxon tells us they are doing? So that’s important and that’s why the EPA is such an important organization. I don’t know if they have the capacity basically to do this sort of monitoring that we need to if we are to ascertain that international standards are being more or less followed by the oil and gas industry in Guyana,” Dr. Trotz said.

Importantly, he urged that the EPA must ensure that the regulations demand that the oil and gas industry operates in accordance with international law. Furthermore, he stressed, “They need to ensure that they don’t depart from that cause the general practice basically is that they cut corners because they are in a country that can’t monitor and that we have to take everything so we need to develop the capacity to monitor and to ensure that whatever the oil and gas industry says that they are doing, that’s the fact and that we are not being shortchanged.”

EPA Monitoring

The EPA in a statement to the media last September assured that no discharges which can be described as “hot and greasy” would be dumped into this country’s waters during offshore oil production.

The EPA head, Kemraj Parsram explained that the agency requires any impact to be well within acceptable levels and as low as reasonably practicable. His comment came on the heels of an article published by Kaieteur News on September 12, 2023 under the headline ‘112,000 tonnes of hot, greasy water to be discharged daily from Exxon’s 6th project – EIA’.

In that article, it was explained that EMGL would be required to treat produced water and other discharges containing oil and other contaminants to specific standards. It also noted however, that the EPA did not respond to queries regarding mechanisms in place to verify that the discharges would be treated to the required standards.

In his statement Parsram noted, “The EPA would never allow any discharges that could be described as hot, greasy water from ever occurring in Guyanese waters…we use continuous independent satellite monitoring to detect even the slightest oil sheen on the waters and thermal imaging to detect every gas flaring. We ensure that our standards are being met every day.”

In addition to the satellite technology being used to monitor these discharges, the Head of the agency said it also “receives live feed” of produced water releases from the FPSOs which are monitored constantly. Moreover, Parsram said independent sampling of water quality is also conducted to ensure that treatment standards are met.

He was keen to note that despite this close oversight, the agency is committed to increasing its monitoring of discharges from the FPSOs and developing an independent review of the monitoring data with the help of international experts.

---

• discharges, dumping, ENVIRONMENT, oil, produced water, Trotz

---