Conservationist Annette Arjoon-Martins says that satellite imagery from Skytruth, an environmental group, shows that ExxonMobil was flaring gas at its offshore operations when it said it wasn’t but the company has denied the claim.
Arjoon-Martins’ Guyana Marine Conservation Society has partnered with the non-profit environmental protection organization Skytruth, which uses satellite imagery, to monitor the environment and sound alerts of threats to it.
She said that the imagery of the Stabroek Block area shows flaring occurred during June 27th to July 7th, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the company had ceased works and was under maintenance. Arjoon-Martins said it should be investigated.
It is why the conservationist is questioning offshore activity at the Stabroek Block during the period the EPA the maintenance period in which the EPA said ExxonMobil had ceased works.
“The data from the satellite reading says something different and the EPA has no way of validating what the company said. This is real time data so it should be investigated,” Arjoon-Martins told Stabroek News yesterday.
Contacted by this newspaper, ExxonMobil said that there had been no flaring during the period, even as it explained that it was working to ramp up production when safe to do so.
“To confirm, we were shut in and not flaring during that period of maintenance. The Department of Energy and EPA receive daily reports…We continue to manage production to minimize flaring during this time,” ExxonMobil’s Director of Public and Government Affairs, Deedra Moe said.
EPA’s Director Dr Vincent Adams yesterday said that the agency indeed has no way of currently verifying information provided by ExxonMobil but added that the agency believes the data given is accurate, as it is a requirement under the permit that the company has with this country to provide requisite information on operations.
“We are taking Exxon’s information. They are obligated by their permit to provide reports. So we stand by the reports,” Adams said.
Arjoon-Martins said that although she is not disputing what the company says about ceasing works for maintenance, satellite data from Skytruth reflects that there was flaring activity during the same time. “We have to validate the information they are giving us,” she said.
Using four readings, on footprint, radiative heat, radiant output, and temperature, the Skytruth data was said to have shown fluctuating levels in all categories from December when production began up to July 16th 2020. From December to late May, the highest readings were registered and the lowest were recorded during the late May to July period.
It is important to note that all vessels produce heat and would be reflected on satellite imagery.
The World Bank reports that its satellite data for estimating flare gas volumes is collected in partnership with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Colorado School of Mines. It explains that NOAA’s satellite mounted Visual and Infrared Radiometer Suite of detectors (VIIRS) has multiple, high-resolution detectors which: respond only to heat emissions and hence are not affected by sunlight, moonlight or other light sources; respond to wavelengths where emissions from flares are at a maximum; and have excellent areal resolution.”
“Emissions from non-flare hot sources (e.g. biomass burning) can be removed from the data easily by selecting only emissions with temperatures above 1100 deg C; other hot sources burn at lower temperatures. Indeed, flares burn hotter than any other terrestrial hot sources, including volcanos,” a World Bank report states.
The World Bank says that over the past seven years of operation, VIIRS has automatically detected ~16,000 flares annually around the globe.
Skytruth uses similar technology and the organization also receives funding from Google and has access to that company’s satellite imagery.
Better outcomes
According to Skytruth’s website, it “uses the view from space to inspire people to protect the environment.”
“We utilize technology to identify and monitor threats to the planet’s natural resources such as offshore drilling and oil spills, urban sprawl, fracking, mountaintop removal mining, and overfishing of the oceans,” the company says.
“We believe better transparency leads to better management and better outcomes. By sharing our findings – stunning imagery and robust science-based data – with the public for free, we move policy makers, governments and corporations towards more responsible behavior in the environment. We arm citizen activists with the tools they need to be more effective advocates. We also provide researchers and scientists with critical data that can inform groundbreaking work – and, notably, aid in the effort to begin asking a new set of questions,” it adds.
On Thursday, Adams had informed that offshore works had ceased for the period June 27th to July 7th, even as he announced that production would reach its peak 120,000 barrels per day by August 10th. At the same time, he said that the company would also cease routine flaring and that the EPA was working to “tighten the language” for permits so that start-up periods are not abused by companies.
“They were under maintenance from June 27th to July 7th and as at today are producing 98,000 barrels per day and they hope to reach the 120,000 mark on August 10th,” Adams told Stabroek News in an interview.
“So when they are at that 120 [000] mark it would mean that flaring would be zero. We are in the meantime working to change the vagueness as to what ‘start up’ and ‘emergency’ means in existing and future permits, as it pertains to the flaring so you won’t have months of flaring. We are tightening the language to say what a startup period should be specifically and definitively. That is, is it a period lasting three days, three weeks, one month? We have to make it clear,” he added.
Adams emphasised that this is why clarity is needed so that there are not prolonged periods of flaring attributed to starting up. “This here is a lesson learned, not only [by] the EPA but the Department of Energy, which has also been playing close attention to this issue and realizes that there needs to be no ambiguity as we go forward into future production.”
The EPA’s actions follows ExxonMobil’s flaring of over 9 billion cubic feet of natural gas offshore ever since production began in December of last year at the Liza-1 well.
Adams had said that the company had to pause reinjection of associated gases and resort to flaring because of compressor glitches offshore at its Liza-1 project, and this has seen the flaring of more than nine billion cubic feet of natural gas over a six-month period.
The World Wildlife Fund, as well as a global environmental and human rights organization, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), have pointed to the effects of the greenhouse gas emissions on the environment, as they condemned the act.
Questioned on the environmental effects on the environment from the flaring and about the long start-up, ExxonMobil had said that its contract with this country allows for routine and emergency flaring but that it would scale back on production and limit flaring to 12 million cubic feet per day.
As a result, production plummeted from the then 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) to between 25,000 and 30,000 bpd while the company worked on fixing its compressor problems. The EPA would inform in June that the company would be halting production as it went into a period of overall maintenance.
