Several civil society groups and members of the public have issued a call for the time allocated for questions and comments to be expanded at an up-coming virtual hearing on Esso’s planned Yellowtail offshore oil project.
An earlier email sent to Jesus Bronchalo, Business and Development Mana-ger, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limit-ed (EEPGL), and copied to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) re-quested a Virtual Meeting on the Yellowtail Project and this was agreed to by Bronchalo. However, concerns are now being raised on the time allocated for public participation. In an email letter seen by this newspaper, the group is requesting that the EEPGL/ERM team and EPA staff presentations be combined and limited to 30 minutes. This request, according to the email, was justified “… based on the experience and feedback of stakeholders who have attended the face to face meetings, there is great concern about the extremely limited time made available for the public to ask questions and make comments.”
The group then requested that 90 minutes be reserved for the public/ stakeholders to pose questions and make comments while noting that even that would not be adequate.
The authors in the email also insisted on accessing specific information prior to the Virtual Meeting. The authors clarified that a link to the 24-page ‘Yellowtail NTS 2021- Non Technical Summary’ be posted in the Press Notice of the Virtual Meeting. They stated that information inaccessibility “results in inadequate and unsatisfactory public participation in the consultation process”. The email further reminded Bron-halo that “… consultation is a two-way exchange (section 11 (9) (a)) of the EPA Act…”
The signatories to the letter to Bronchalo include Vanda Radzik, Janette Bulkan, Jerry Jailall, Simone Mangal and Frederick Collins and NGOs Transparency Institute Guyana Inc, Policy Forum Guyana, Oil & Gas Governance Network and Red Thread amongst others.
The Virtual Meeting on the Yellowtail project is now set for Thursday, November 11 between 6.00 – 8.00 PM.
