The risk to various parts of the Caribbean from an oil spill from ExxonMobil’s planned development at Yellowtail was raised during the most recent consultation on the project.
On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) along with consultancy firm – Environmental Resources Management (ERM) hosted a virtual consultation session to discuss the findings of the Yellowtail Development Project’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana.
The Yellowtail project is ExxonMobil and partners’, fourth development in the Stabroek Block and is considered the largest undertaking since Guyana became an oil-producing nation. As part of the Yellowtail Project, ExxonMobil plans to drill between 40 and 67 wells for the 20-year duration of the investment. It is intended to be the largest of the four developments with over 250,000 barrels of oil per day targeted once production commences. Based on the schedule, once approval is granted, engineering commences in 2022 and production in the latter part of 2025.
According to the EIA, in addition to Guyana, some 11 Caribbean and South American territories can be affected should there be a spill offshore Guyana. Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Bonaire, Curacao, Aruba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Colombia are some of the countries that could be affected, the document states.
Stabroek News on Friday reported that Jamaican environmentalist Diana McCaulay called for the EPA to hold off on approving the project until it shares the EIA findings with other territories. Her Trinidadian counterpart Gary Aboud, of the Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) threatened legal action against Guyana if it fails to address certain aspects of the findings of the EIA.
At Thursday night’s consultation, officials from ERM, the EPA and ExxonMobil were faced with a barrage of questions relating to the effects of oil spills and what plans are in place to deal with those. When asked about whether ERM found it necessary to consult with other territories, the gathering was told that the body was acting within the confines of Guyana’s Environmental Protection Act and while the transnational effects of an oil spill were explored, other territories were not consulted.
“We’re well aware of that due to the modelling that was done and that is why we have…a whole section on trans boundary impacts (in the EIA) where we have individual discussions that go into the probability of oil reaching any of the countries that the modelling suggests it might reach and a summary of the high-level sensitivities that we’ve mapped in those countries that could be affected. So certainly transboundary impacts are something that we took seriously in the unplanned events chapter of the EIA,” Jason Willey of ERM related.
With the production of oil occurring some 203 kilometres (approximately 126 miles) offshore Guyana, the EIA states that in the event of an unmitigated oil spill, the probability of oil reaching Guyana’s shore is low. It also states that a potential oil spill is “considered unlikely because of exhaustive preventative measures employed by EEPGL (Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited).”
Stochastic
Nevertheless, the EIA explored the probabilities of a spill and its effects using stochastic modelling. It also said that prevailing northwest currents, the nature of the Yellowtail and Redtail fields’ crude oil, and the region’s warm waters would all help reduce the severity of a spill.
The oil that will be produced from the Yellowtail and Redtail fields is categorized as a “medium crude” oil with a specific gravity less than that of water. For a release near the top of the water column, the majority of this oil would rise quickly to the water surface. For a release near the seabed, the oil would rise and the plume containing the oil droplets and gas bubbles would entrain seawater as it moves upward in the water column.
Based on the EIA document, the stochastic modelling accounts for the variability in conditions such as winds and ocean currents by simulating hundreds of individual spills and generating a map that is a composite of all of the trajectories and provides a probability footprint showing the most likely path that a spill would follow.
Stochastic modelling of an unmitigated subsea release of crude oil from a loss-of-well control event indicates a less than 5 per cent to 40 per cent probability of oil reaching the Guyana coast, without taking into consideration the effectiveness of any oil spill response, and the low likelihood that such a spill would occur. Modelling of an unmitigated 2,500-barrel release from an FPSO offloading spill indicates no impact to the Guyana coast.
The EIA document said that based on the modelling, oil would travel rapidly north and or west depending on the season.
“Oil spill modelling indicates that transboundary impacts could potentially occur for the largest spill scenarios considered. These include a 2,500-barrel (400 m3) release from an FPSO offloading spill and two loss-of-well-control scenarios: the Most Credible Worst Case-Discharge (WCD), which would be predicted to discharge 88,728 barrels of oil per day (BPD) (14,196.5 m3), and the WCD, which would be predicted to discharge 177,157 BPD (28,345.1 m3), assuming no mitigation measures were implemented,” the report said.
Based on the modelling, an unmitigated (no efforts taken to control spill) oil spill during the months of December to May shows that spilt oil would travel west-northwesterly through the Gulf of Paria and along the southern and eastern coasts of Trinidad and Tobago. The EIA states that this scenario would expose the northern coast of South America and the southern Lesser Antilles to the bulk of the exposure to oiling. An equivalent slick from the same spill during the months of June to November would track slightly more to the north, away from the western Venezuelan Coast and further north in the western Atlantic toward the central and southern portions of the Lesser Antilles, across the Caribbean Sea, and eventually to the Greater Antilles.
The report states that Trinidad and Tobago, because of its unique positioning at the southern end of the Lesser Antilles, would have the highest probability of being affected by an oil spill offshore Guyana.
“The probability of oiling at least a portion of the coast of Trinidad and Tobago and/or its coastal waters is approximately 10 to 100 per cent for the unmitigated Most Credible WCD scenario scenarios. The lower end of this probability range increases slightly for a loss-of-well-control event in the last half of the year, yielding a 20 to 100 per cent probability of shoreline oiling under the Maximum WCD scenario. The highest probabilities of oiling occur on exposed, eastern-facing shorelines under both scenarios. A mitigated loss-of-well-control event would be expected to reach northern Trinidad and southern Tobago, but only for the Maximum WCD scenario and only in the Jun–Nov season,” the EIA document informs.
There, sensitive coastal resources are expected to be threatened and that includes mangroves, manatee habitat, marine turtle nesting beaches and forest reserves along with coral reefs.
“The Orinoco River Delta is located south of Trinidad in eastern Venezuela and is the most important coastal area that could be affected by a loss-of-well-control event from a biodiversity perspective. The Orinoco River Delta supports numerous biological resources of regional and global significance, including extensive mangroves, diverse shorebird and estuarine fish communities, threatened and endangered marine turtles and marine mammals, and artisanal and commercial fisheries (Miloslavich et al. 2011). Modelling indicates that the shortest time of arrival in the delta for an unmitigated Most Credible spill would be about 10 to 25 days in summer and approximately 5 to 10 days during winter, although oil could take longer to reach some areas within the delta. The western portion of the Orinoco Delta, particularly the more exposed outer shorelines of the hundreds of small islands scattered through the delta, constitute one of two primary concentrations of marine turtle nesting activity in the country,” the EIA document relates.
For the other territories that stand to be affected, coral reefs and other coastal biodiversity are listed to be affected.
