Hot temperature from discharges can kill marine species – Exxon warns in summary for 7th project  

Jul 17, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – Discharges from the seventh project being pursued by ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) in the Stabroek Block- Hammerhead can potentially affect the quality of water and harm marine species and wildlife.

This information is contained in the Project Summary submitted by Exxon to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The regulator has since instructed the company to conduct a thorough Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to study the likely damage that can be done to the environment by the project. This study will also highlight measures to mitigate those harmful impacts.

According to the Project Summary seen by this newspaper, “The Project could have localised impacts to marine water quality in the project development area from discharge of drill cuttings and from routine operational and hydrotesting discharges. The Project could potentially impact marine water quality in the Project area of interest (AOI) as a result of non-routine, unplanned events (e.g., spill or release).”

Drill cuttings and drill fluid discharges during the drilling of development wells; effluent discharges from cooling water and produced water; hydrotesting discharges and non-routine, unplanned events such as a spill can result in the release of dangerous substances that can affect marine life. Exxon said, “Increased total suspended solids concentrations, chemical concentrations, or temperature in water column has a potential to affect marine water quality and marine habitat quality and affect wildlife.”

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. Exxon has sounded the warning before, in six EIAs for its previously sanctioned projects, of the dangers associated with the dumping of produced water into the ocean. Produced water discharges from each of the projects vary.

For instance, the sixth project – Whiptail – which will produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) will also produce 200,000 barrels of produced water daily which will be dumped into the ocean.

On the other hand, the fifth project Uaru which is being designed to produce 250,000 bpd will see the discharge or 300,000 bpd of produced water.  Prior to the dumping of produced water offshore, it is treated on the FPSOs to ensure it aligns with the industry standards, as required by the EPA.  The Permits granted to Exxon by the regulator 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”.

Dr. Ulric Trotz during an interview with Kaieteur News earlier this year stressed the need for stringent monitoring of these discharges by the EPA.  He said, “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.

The Scientist urged that the EPA must ensure regulations demand that the oil and gas industry operates in accordance with international law. To this end, he cautioned, “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.”

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• Discharge, EIA, Hammerhead, produced water, temperature

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