Lack of an effective monitoring and regulatory mechanism for offshore oil & gas in Guyana

Jun 14, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – The Oil and Gas Governance Network (OGGN) here amplifies Ms. Danuta Radzik’s letter in Kaieteur News on 30 May ‘Open letter to EPA on lack of regulatory mechanism for offshore oil & gas industry in Guyana’.   We take up numbered paragraph 8 in Ms. Radzik’s letter, on the discharge of produced water from the three currently operating Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessels (FPSOs).

In the table below, we show just for the first two FPSOs – Liza Destiny and Liza Unity – the scheduled discharge overboard of thousands of barrels of hot dirty water every day.   Ordinary, safe-sustained peaks and potential peaks for oil extraction are given in the environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for each of the separate oil fields, as drafted by Environmental Resources Management Inc. (ERM, consultants for ExxonMobil) or Acorn Consultants and approved by our Environmental Protection Agency.

Subsequent information presented in the graphs on the web page of www.petroleum.gov.gy/data-visualization?tid=207 show that EMGL has increased some extraction and discharge rates well beyond what are given in the EIAs, apparently without any review of safety by qualified auditing engineers.  This management policy greatly increases risk of environmental disaster, so ExxonMobil has foisted on the PPP/C government a poorly drafted Oil Spill Bill to relieve itself of any financial or practical liability.

In its usual anti-democratic manner, the ruling PPP/C has disregarded every suggestion made by citizens and the parliamentary opposition to improve this get-out-of-jail Bill.  President Ali, although aspiring to re-election, has preferred to favour the oil companies by assenting to the Act instead of standing up for the citizens of Guyana.  And not to mention our Caribbean neighbours with their down-current tourist and fishing beaches at great risk from a Guyanese offshore oil spill.

The principal data on discharges of wastes are in tables in the first volume of each Environmental Impact Assessment prepared for ExxonMobil by consultants ERM or Acorn.  In the table below, we show the immense volumes of waste which the ocean is being asked to cool, dilute and clean every day, if the waste discharges increase proportionately with oil extraction rates.  However, the data visualization graphs show that discharges do not increase in that simple way.  A problem is that the data visualization graph (tid=207) labels coolant water which is discharged as water which is being re-injected into the oil wells to maintain pressure; this seems to be wrongly labelled.  The graph also seems to refer only to the Liza-1 oil field (FPSO Liza Destiny) but that is not clear.  The rising amount of hot produced water as shown on the graph (tid=203) is consistent with the decline in oil extraction as the reservoir is emptied.

Kbpd* = thousand barrels per day

Note that the daily discharge of black-water sewage from the FPSO Liza Destiny is the equivalent of the average sewage from a 4000-room hotel.

To put these figures into dimensions understandable in Guyana, the Marriott Hotel in Kingston has a volume of about 32,000 cubic metres, which is the same as 200,000 barrels of oil (42 US gallons per barrel).  So the daily coolant discharge of hot water from FPSO Liza Destiny alone was equivalent to 3 ½ Marriott Hotels, and at the actual rate of extraction of oil (157 Kbpd) at peak in November 2024, the FPSO was discharging almost 5 Marriott Hotels of hot and contaminated liquid waste (700+130+100=930 Kbpd, divide by 200,000 = nearly 5 volumes of the hotel, per day).  FPSO Liza Unity is producing twice as much waste from the Liza-2 field as the original and smaller FPSO Liza Destiny from the Liza-1 field.  The third FPSO Prosperity and the in-transit FPSO One-Guyana are even bigger.  This reality of unaudited waste disposal does not match government claims to a Green Guyana, in the current (2030) edition of the Low Carbon Development Strategy.

The contaminants are listed in the EIAs.  Some discharges (bilge water and produced water) are treated in the FPSOs to reduce the amounts of contaminants but there are still residual amounts of hypochlorites, electrolytes, biocides, oxygen scavengers and scale inhibitors as well as the traces of oil and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), alkylphenols (APs), and heavy metals.

And how hot is the coolant water at the discharge flange? – 50-55 degrees Celsius, which would burn your skin.

OGGN notes that the Environmental Protection Agency (headed by Kemraj Parasram) did not reply to Ms Radzik’s thoroughly- worded challenge of 30 May.  Can he justify his generous salary by responding to our calculations, as citizens might reasonably expect from the Public Service Rules of Conduct, May 2004?

The data visualizations now on record (https://petroleum.gov.gy/data-visualization?tid=207) show decline of the Liza-1 field and so lesser discharge volumes than calculated in the table, and possibly consolidated volumes of water waste from all 3 fields, but no clarification on the web pages.

Janette Bulkan

Alfred Bhulai

Kenrick Hunte

Darshanand Khusial

Joe Persaud

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• Alfred Bhulai, Darshanand Khusial, Janette Bulkan, Joe Persaud, Kenrick Hunte

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