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No need for independent meters on oil pumps
– Oil minister says govt. has enough access to data to monitor activities offshore
Kaieteur News – There have been concerns and constant calls by civil society and experts in the oil industry for Guyana to have its independent meters to monitor ExxonMobil’s oil production, as well as the treatment of produced water.
Minister of Natural Resources
In spite of this the Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat has said that the purpose of independent meters is to monitor production offshore and the government already has access to Exxon’s dashboard to do such. At a recent news conference when asked about independent meters, Bharrat said: “we have a dashboard I was explaining, it was shown to you, it wasn’t live but it was shown to you that we can actually monitor production at 10-minute intervals we can monitor the production. Before a tanker is offloaded, before a tanker is filled GRA has to be there, GNBS has to be there.”
Minister Bharrat explained that in the absence of the presence of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), and the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS), no crude can be offloaded from the Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel into any oil tanker. “Without GNBS and without GRA it cannot happen.” He said there are a number of safeguards to ensure that “we monitor what is happening offshore.” He further stated that, “The whole issue about the independent meter is monitoring, you want us to know what is happening offshore, but we are telling you we have about five, six layers to monitor what is happening offshore. We control the meter because GNBS if they are not there the meter can’t flow, it can’t turn on.”
Since the whole process is computerised Bharrat is confident that, “it cannot be manipulated or changed, so there is a good system of monitoring what is happening offshore. Either by the dashboard or physical presence onboard with GRA, with EPA, with GNBS and we are training some staff now that will be on the FPSO too. They will be full time on the FPSO, some Ministry of Natural Resources staff are being trained currently by SBM that will be offshore too to monitor everything not only production but everything that is happening offshore.”
On the issue of produced water and whether it is properly treated before being dumped into Guyana’s waters, Bharrat said the same monitoring is being done. “It is the same thing with (produced) water EPA ensures they go and they monitor it. EPA goes out there probably every week, you see these are the things that I don’t think the media and the Guyanese public know. They believe that Exxon alone is running this operation offshore and Guyana don’t check on it but EPA goes there every week. GRA and GNBS must be there before they offload. We have a link to the fiber optic cable that we can see real time what is the production. EPA checks the water before it is discharged to ensure that it is treated to international standards, before it is discharged back into the ocean. All these things are being done by us,” the minister stated.
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