The Government of Guyana may end up executing and operating the Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) plant with Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) being only responsible for the pipeline, according to the gas to shore project manager Friedrich Krispin.
Krispin made the disclosure at the fourth of 11 public consultation sessions on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) submitted to the EPA.
On April 20, ExxonMobil through its consultant Environmental Resource Management (ERM) submitted the environmental study for the US$1.3b gas-to-shore project which the government hopes will lead to vastly lower energy costs that would enable a spurt in manufacturing. There have been doubts over the country’s execution capacity and whether a feasibility study has been done for this massive project which would be the biggest in the country’s history.
The submission of the environmental study has triggered the 60-day public review process. In accordance with Section 11 (10) of the Environmental Protection Act, Cap. 20:05, members of the public can review the EIA and make written submissions to the Environmental Protection Agency, as they consider appropriate. All submissions are to be addressed to the Executive Director of the EPA and sent to the Ganges Street, Sophia office or emailed to epa@epaguyana.org.
June 18 has been earmarked as the final date for submissions from the public on the EIA.
Exxon, through public notices in the press, advertised that face-to-face sessions will be held with information on the gas-to-energy project, the EPA environmental authorization process and the findings from the assessment to “support public awareness.”
The pipeline is expected to land at Crane/Nouvelle Flanders, West Coast Demerara and make its way to Wales on the West Bank of the Demerara. The project will involve capturing associated gas produced from crude oil production operations on the Liza Phase 1 (Destiny) and Liza Phase 2 (Unity) Floating, Production, Storage, and Offloading (FPSO) vessels, transporting approximately 50 million standard cubic feet per day (MMscfd; 1.4 million standard cubic meters per day [MMsm3/d]) of gas via a subsea pipeline and then an onshore pipeline to a natural gas liquids (NGL) processing plant (NGL Plant), treating the gas to remove NGLs for sale to third parties, and ultimately delivering dry gas for use at the Power Plant.
The project includes the construction and operation of a natural gas pipeline from the Liza Phase 1 (Destiny) and Liza Phase 2 (Unity) FPSO vessels via a subsea line and then an onshore natural gas pipe-line to an onshore NGL Plant. The pipeline will transport up to approximately 50 MMscfd of dry gas to the NGL Plant. The NGL Plant will drop the pressure of the gas; dehydrate the gas; separate out the NGLs (i.e., propane, butane, and pentanes+) for sale to third parties; and treat the remaining “dry” gas to the specifications appropriate for use as fuel or raw materials by third parties.
The EIA was done to account for the impact of both the NGL plant and the pipeline. The general conclusions of the study indicate that the effects on the environment are mostly negligible.
At yesterday’s consultation held at the Umana Yana in Kingston, George-town, Krispinwas questioned, by former Minister of Public Works David Patterson, on the operational aspect of the projects, specifically on whether EEPGL will be operating the pipeline and NGL plant.
Nothing has been concretised
In response, Krispin said that there have been much discussions on who executes the project and who operates it but nothing has been concretised as yet.
“The EIA was drafted and written and studied by the independent consultants for pipelines and NGL plant, okay. Subsequent discussions with the government, that have not been solidified, lead us to believe that we may split it differently. What I’m referring to is the fact that EEPGL may execute the pipeline and operate the pipeline and potentially the government of Guyana will execute the NGL energy power plant together and operate those. That has not been completely decided. That’s a proposal that we have on the table today,” he informed.
He added that the Environmental Protection Act makes provision for the EPA to select different partners to transfer an environmental study from one organisation to another for projects that have been split. He further related that should EEPGL and the government go down the path of splitting the project, then they would work with the EPA to ensure a transfer of the study.
Krispin was also questioned on EEPGL’s possible liability should something go wrong with the project and while he refused to answer to the specific liabilities, he did say that the company will be responsible for its projects.
“I don’t speak on behalf of our law department and I’m probably not allowed to answer that question but I will say when you ask about liabilities, that’s a term I will not touch on because that’s a legal term…[if you are] talking about responsibility, I will tell you that we will always be responsible for the projects that we execute and for the projects that we operate,” Kristin said.
He later added, “So we will operate that [pipe]line all the way through and therefore as good operators that we are, we are responsible for anything…that happens or could be responsible for anything that happens all the way to the big receiver.”
Krispin reassured persons at the consultation session that ExxonMobil is a company that does not walk away from its responsibilities.
“We make sure we take care of things. We make sure that we take care of the communities where we live. We make sure that we clean up the environment that there is an incident and we make sure that things are left very much like we found,” he said.
In his presentation on the project overview, Krispin said that the gas to energy project is intended to ease the electricity supply woes and aid the transition from heavy fuel oils to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He added that Guyana has a lot of gas offshore that is currently being re-injected to maintain pressure but that gas can be used for the betterment and improvement of its citizens.
“The purpose is to transport gas from offshore to onshore, then extract NGLS…and then get to a leaner gas that can then be used into the turbines of a power plant that will be built by the government of Guyana and that will then generate about twice the amount of electricity that is currently generated in Guyana feeding the grid. That will allow for the generation of electricity and will allow also for the growth of industry that requires electricity and there will be some gas also that could be used for fueling other industries,” Kristin explained.
He also explained how the pipelines would be laid along the route adding that the construction phase of the project will be about three years and EEPGL expect first power by the end of 2024. Kristin told the persons gathered that with a 25-year lifespan, the offshore pipeline will be laid on the seabed in waters with a depth of more than 20 metres based on the studies and international best practices. In waters with depths less than 20 meters the pipe would be buried to prevent damage by vessels and fisherfolk.
He assured that the pipe is designed to withstand one and a half times the pressure of the gas being delivered, iterating that it is being tested at every point.
For the onshore aspect of the pipe, Krispin said that the company would employ mostly horizontal drilling to bury it underground. He also informed that the pipe would be laid under the seawall so that they would not have to cut the seawall to facilitate the passage of the pipe. He explained that the turns in the pipeline are to minimize the impact on communities so that they would not have to acquire substantial private property.
“So when gas comes out of the ground, it has mostly methane and ethane. Those are lighter hydrocarbons. Those are the ones that you would use to fuel the power plant. Now the gas also has a certain percentage of propane, butane and ethane. Propane and butane are what you use in a certain mixture of composition to actually burn in cooking gas. We believe that with the amount of gas that we’ll bring in here and with the NGL extraction, there will be more than three times what is currently used here in Guyana for natural gas. So there will be gas that can actually be exported in the end,” he informed.
To facilitate the development, a lot of infrastructural work would have to be completed and according to Krispin, there would be the need for substantial road upgrades as well enhancing the bridges. He added that they are seeking to minimize the use of the roadways in an effort to not impact traffic so materials offloading facility (MOF) would be constructed in the Demerara River in Wales to transport heavy equipment and modules.
Additionally, they will be constructing a heavy haul road from the MOF to the plant site to facilitate transport. They are hoping to construct the MOF and heavy haul road by the end of 2022 or early 2023 providing all the permits are granted.
EIA
A team from Environmental Management Resource (ERM) the consultant company that conducts all of EEPGL’s impact studies was there to defend their EIA. ERM failed to address the fact that questions have been raised about its relationship with Exxon as well as its objectivity in executing the environmental studies.
Last year, for the Yellowtail study, ERM “erroneously” included a letter bearing the signature of Shyam Nokta a government aligned environmentalist in its EIA submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency.
At yesterday’s consultation, ERM was represented by its Guyana Programme Lead Todd Hall, Biological Resources Specialist Jason Willey and Anna Sundby, Socioeconomic, Stakeholder Engagement, and Ecosystems Services Specialist.
The team explained the process of compiling the EIA and the various studies that were done to address the impacts of the project.
Hall told the gathering that after the consultation period is over, the EPA will look at the comments and submissions made by citizens and groups after which it would communicate its decision to ERM. He said that decision can either be to revise the EIA, add more information, or do more studies or it can be accepted as is. He also informed that there was no timeline for the EPA to ask for those studies and that the agency has unlimited powers to demand more information from the consultant.
There were at least 10 EPA employees, including the head of its oil and gas division Joel Gravesande, at the consultation taking notes.
The ERM team explained the various aspects of the study and how they arrived at the ratings for each.
Three areas were considered namely physical, biological and socioeconomic resources. But various sub-areas were studied for over six months to provide the overall impact of the study. The ERM team agreed that there are positive benefits to the socioeconomic condition while the risk ranges from minor to moderate for the overall project.
When asked why the power plant was not included in the EIA, since it is a part of the entire project, Hall explained that EEPGL is the entity responsible for the NGL plant and pipeline while the Guyana Power and Light is responsible for the power plant. Therefore, it is on GPL to do whatever the EPA requires before the construction of the plant.
“It’s GPL’s remit under the law, of course, to do whatever the EPA directs it to do with respect to environmental assessment in the process of acquiring a permit for the power plant. However, we obviously know the power plant is important, right and so we did everything we could in the cumulative impact assessment to make sure that we considered as best we could, based on the definition of the power plant, what the combined impacts would be.
“The hardest part of an EIA is those cumulative impact assessments because you don’t have access to as much data to other people’s projects. So we did the best we could on that. When it comes time for whatever assessment gets done for the power plant to be done, that entity that does that assessment will have a tremendous amount of detail from our EIA to consider the combined impacts of the two,” Hall explained.
He added that it is standard practice for separate EIAs to be done for different components of the same project when different entities are working on separate stages of the development.
The consultations continue today at Anna Regina from 9 am.
