Dear Editor,
ExxonMobil has again started to flare gas because of a compressor failure. They have claimed that they had to cut output as a result, and it is expected that flaring will continue until the unit is repaired and returned to service.
This begs the question, does ExxonMobil only have one gas compressor? Or is it one of many gas compressors that have failed? It is inconceivable that ExxonMobil did not build in redundancy into their system. They should have had at least one spare compressor installed to be used when a unit is out for maintenance or in the event of a failure as has happened on at least two occasions now.
In an article published in 1999 in the Oil and Gas Journal, John Mercier stated inter-alia, “It is illegal to flare gas in the Gulf of Mexico, which means there must be some alternative for handling the large quantities these fields will produce. An operator can go one of two ways. He can either reinject the gas, an expensive process that would most likely only be profitable on the largest of fields, or he can pipe it to shore”.
One would ask why am I quoting an article that is 20 years old? My reason is that, if it was illegal twenty years ago to flare gas in the Gulf of Mexico, why did the Guyana Government sign a contract with ExxonMobil giving them carte blanche to flare gas in Guyana. This makes no sense especially given the fact that Guyana signed the Paris Climate Agreement on 22 April 2016.
To add insult to injury, ExxonMobil now says that they can make 50 mmscfd of gas available to Guyana and they want us to finance the cost of the pipeline and the handling of the shipment of gas to shore. The fact of the matter is that if ExxonMobil were operating in the USA, they would have been fined for flaring gas and would have been forced to pipe the gas to shore at their cost.
However, in Guyana’s situation, this is a moot point because if ExxonMobil were to construct the gas pipeline and transport the excess gas to shore, under the terms of their contract, they would still be able to pass on the cost to the Guyana Government and ultimately the Guyanese people.
Yours truly,
Tara Singh
