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Independent meters at FPSO’s long overdue – David Patterson
General Secretary of the AFC, David Patterson.
Kaieteur News – General Secretary of the Alliance for Change (AFC) David Patterson on Friday said that independent meters at the country’s floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) Unit to monitor Exxon’s production are long overdue.
Guyana has been pumping oil since 2019 and currently production stands at 640,000 barrels daily. However, up until recently there was no known means for the government to monitor oil production in real time.
In fact, on Thursday, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo disclosed that three government agencies, The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) are able to monitor screens set up by oil giant ExxonMobil to monitor activities offshore in real time.
During the AFC’s press conference held on Friday Patterson said that, “From the very inception when oil was produced in 2019, I know Vince is here as well, we have advocated that there should be onboard presence for monitoring not only by EPA, also by all the regulatory agencies. We have insisted that they be equipped with equipment to independently verify oil production.”
Patterson reminded that the government is depending on ExxonMobil for data and though he isn’t saying the information provided by the oil company is incorrect, it is important to monitor the data independently.
“We have seen that the time is long overdue we can afford it, Exxon would have no option but to agree with the government should they want to implement it. So we say it is way overdue and should be done as speedily as possible,” he added.
Former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Dr. Vincent Adams said that the monitoring of production was something that he had insisted on from day one.
“I notice the Vice President suddenly coming out and start talking about monitoring… What we called for and I know I called for from day before production was for us to have onboard, onsite monitoring,” he said that.
The Government of Guyana has no fixed timeline to procure independent meters to monitor the production of oil from the country’s lucrative Stabroek Block, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo disclosed on Thursday.
Jagdeo was at the time speaking at his weekly press conference held at Freedom House, Robb Street, Georgetown. The Vice President said too that the government has no independent way of monitoring Exxon’s operations.
Notwithstanding, the Vice President disclosed that despite belief that the Government has no means of monitoring Exxon’s operations, the government through the GRA, EPA and the GGMC is able to monitor via Exxon’s screen.
“Right now there is an impression that we don’t get any data, we don’t do any monitoring. So you do have people from the Bureau of Standards on board the vessel and also from GRA. They look at the meters, the calibration of the meters all of these things to look at the flow of the oil and the produced water.”
The data received from Exxon’s meters currently monitoring the different aspects of offshore production is updated in a 10 minute cycle, the VP told reporters. The government is also able to monitor drilling data via Exxon’s screens.
Jagdeo reiterated that the three governmental agencies “have access to that dashboard…so we can also track what’s going on offshore but we plan to do our own thing independently later.”
“I doubt it is going to change much from what we see but we [Government] will have the comfort,” Jagdeo told reporters.
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