Attorney Melinda Janki had last year urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to allow ExxonMobil and its partners to produce higher than 120,000 barrels of oil per day from the Liza-1 well as that would be going beyond its design limits and would be dangerous.
This issue has assumed significant interest in light of recent gas compression problems on the Liza-1 which has seen ExxonMobil resuming flaring above pilot levels to ensure “safe” operations. Whether the compression problems are linked to production levels has not been established but in recent days, Exxon’s partner Hess has spoken publicly about going beyond 120,000 barrels per day.
In a terse statement on January 29 2021, Exxon said: “There was a technical issue regarding a seal on the gas compressor on Liza Destiny. This unfortunate incident resulted in us having to temporarily increase our flare above pilot levels in order to maintain safe operations”.
Janki had written a letter on August 4th 2020 to the former Head of the EPA, Dr Vincent Adams after he had stated on a July 23rd Kaieteur Radio programme that Exxon had intended to increase daily production to 125,000 barrels.
Janki had pointed out on the radio programme that the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel’s safety limits as documented in Exxon’s subsidiary, Esso Exploration and Produc-tion Guyana Limited’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was 100,000 barrels per day. Janki stated that “It would be extremely dangerous and irresponsible for Esso to use equipment beyond its design limits or to exceed the full capacity of the system”.
In the letter to Dr. Adams on August 4th, Janki said that the design specifications of the FPSO was incorporated into Esso’s EIS which specifically established an oil production safety rate of 100,000 bpd. Esso’s EIS also stated that the FPSO was designed to ‘safely operate at sustained peaks of 120,000 bpd’. The EIS further states at 2.5.1: “The FPSO will be designed to receive the full production wellstream from the development wells and will process crude oil at a design rate of 100,000 barrels of oil per day (BOPD), with potential to safely operate at sustained peaks of up to approximately 120,000 BOPD.”
“Esso’s EIS makes it absolutely clear that the FPSO is not designed to produce 125,000 bpd at any time whatsoever. The FPSO is designed to produce 100,000 bpd. Esso’s EIS does not guarantee that the FPSO can safely operate at ‘sustained peaks’ of up to 120,000 bpd. The EIS says it has the ‘potential’ which means merely that it is possible. That is too flimsy to rely on when the activity concerned is dangerous deep water drilling”, Janki warned.
She urged a series of actions by the EPA including:
(i) Immediately instruct Esso that it must not increase production above 100,000 bpd;
(ii) Immediately inform Esso that the EPA will terminate the environmental permit if Esso exceeds production of 100,000 bpd;
(iii) Require Esso to provide evidence from the supplier of the FPSO that the FPSO is guaranteed to operate safely at those ‘sustained peaks’ or to provide some other form of reliable technical guarantee;
(iv) Obtain an independent expert assessment of the technical capability of the FPSO;
(v) Publish the information provided by Esso and the independent expert.
Janki further argued that Esso did not keep the commitment it made in the EIS to re-inject the associated natural gas. Instead, she said, Esso had flared over 9 billion cubic feet posing a threat to the environment and the well-being of the Guyanese people.
“In carrying out its statutory duty to protect the people and environment of Guyana, the Agency can no longer rely on Esso’s assurances. The Agency must act more prudently and require Esso to provide solid independent evidence that it has the capacity to do what it claims”, Janki asserted.
