EPA must ensure quality of environmental studies before approving Permits – Jagdeo

Nov 26, 2024 Holiday Greetings

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…as Exxon hires same consultant for a 9^th time accused of ‘cut and paste’ EIAs

Kaieteur News- Prior to approving Permits for any planned development, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must ensure that environmental studies submitted by the contractor meets the required standard.

This was signaled by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday during his weekly press engagement at Freedom House, Robb Street, Georgetown. The VP was at the time responding to a question by this newspaper on the approval process for consultants to conduct Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for ExxonMobil’s oil projects. The question came on the heels of a revelation that the oil company hired its long-time Consultant, Environmental Resources Management (ERM) for a ninth time to undertake an EIA.

Its most recent contract with Exxon will see the Consultant conducting an EIA for the seventh project- Hammerhead- even as stakeholders accuse the group of completing ‘cut and paste’ studies. Jagdeo was therefore asked whether government was comfortable with the quality of work being paid for. To this end, the former Head of State explained, “That’s where the EPA has to be vigilant so when the EIAs are presented to the EPA, then the EPA has to be vigilant to see that all of the questions that should be answered are answered and to their satisfaction too that’s why we have an EPA…they have to ensure that the quality is good enough before they issue that Permit.”

The Vice President confirmed that these studies are paid for by Guyana through cost oil. He however reminded that the country does not have a say in approving the contract, however, it has now enacted the Local Content Law which requires a local company to complete a portion of the work.

He added, “I didn’t want to tell tales but it is our intention even on the environmental work to increase that percentage so that more local companies can benefit.” The Vice President pointed out that while government is willing to increase the work load of local companies, there would still be concerns over the expertise of those companies. He said, “but then we do it for audit y’all complain that oh you are giving to local companies who don’t have experience, so that’s the dilemma. You can’t win with Kaieteur News because we try to build capacity with locals, you run down the locals, so if you don’t have any expertise, you are useless etcetera and then you want the foreigners to come and do this now and now you are saying the foreigners doing all of this; we should get more local companies to do it- we would love that to happen.” Further, the Vice President said that while the Local Content Law presently makes provision for the utilization of Guyanese for environmental studies, there may be a need to increase Guyanese participation. At the same time, he noted, “And some of these companies, trust me, I wouldn’t put it past them to have local partners already so they would qualify under the Local Content Law too so we have to tighten up there.”

(EPA must ensure quality of environmental studies before approving Permits – Jagdeo)

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• ‘cut and paste’, Consultant, EIA, EPA, QUALITY

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