The Environmental Assessment Board (EAB) yesterday held a hearing on the appeal of EPA decisions not to have impact surveys for ExxonMobil’s planned exploration in the offshore Canje and Kaieteur blocks.
The hearing followed a boycott of the proceedings by the complainant, environmentalist, Simone Mangal-Joly who claimed that the EAB is not independent and its decisions are intended to favour the EPA.
Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limit-ed (EEPGL), last year submitted an application to Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for environmental authorisation to drill 12 wells each in the Canje and Kaieteur Blocks.
According to the project description, the drilling of the wells is expected to commence in the 4th quarter of 2022 with conclusion of the proposed drilling campaign expected by the first quarter of 2027.
Based on the water depths in the Kaieteur Block, multiple dynamically-positioned drill ships would be used to drill the wells. The Kaieteur Multi-well Programme aims to gather data on the reservoir characteristics, hydrocarbon presence, pressure, and temperatures. If the presence of hydrocarbons is discovered, wells will be tested to establish the limits of the reservoir.
Additionally, the productivity of wells and the oil or gas properties present will be tested. Once the proposed drilling operations are complete, the exploration well will be permanently plugged and abandoned
On March 07, 2021, the EPA said it reviewed the company’s drilling programme for exploration and its appraisal of 12 wells in the Kaieteur Block and had concluded that there is no requirement for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Mean-while, a similar notice in relation to the Canje Block exploration was published back on February 14, 2022.
“In accordance with Section 11(2) of the Environmental Protection Act, CAP 20:05, Laws of Guyana, the application for the project listed above has been screened by the Agency to assess the potential environmental impacts. It has been determined that the project will not significantly affect the environment or human health. It is, therefore, exempt from the requirement of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA),” the notice from the EPA had said in both instances.
It advised that ExxonMobil would have to submit an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for the projects. It also triggered the statutory 30-day period for persons to make objections to the Environmental Assessment Board (EAB).
In a letter, dated March 11, 2022, Mangal-Joly wrote to the EAB objecting to the decisions on the ground of a lack of data. The environmentalist argued that there is no recorded evidence in the already completed EIAs for Exxon’s activities offshore nor in the baseline studies conducted that pinpoints the locations of coral reefs and fish nurseries relative to existing drill sites and/or proposed exploratory drill sites. She added that there is no baseline information in any of the studies, to which Exxon’s applications refer, on fish and mammal life cycle and migratory patterns, and the extent and full economic and socio-economic value of offshore-related fisheries or near-shore fisheries affected by offshore oil and gas logistic activities.
She also blasted the EPA for not publishing its screening report despite being required to do so.
Mangal-Joly was scheduled to appear before the EAB yesterday to further plead her case at a hearing following which the Board would advise whether it agrees with her that an EIA is required or it would uphold the EPA’s decision.
Boycott
In her letter dated June 30, 2022, and addressed to Chair of the EAB, Pradeepa Bholanath, Mangal-Joly stated that she does not “have confidence that the EAB can provide a fair and impartial hearing or an independent decision based on technical considerations. I am boycotting your hearing in protest for a fair and independent EAB.”
However, she clarified that her boycott of the hearing does not equate to the withdrawal of the objection to the EPA’s decision to waive EIAs for the Canje and Kaieteur blocks drilling. She informed Bholanath that the EAB is equipped with adequate technical information that ought to compel it to apply the precautionary principle enshrined in the Environmental Protection Act (EP-Act) in its assessment of the EPA’s decision to waive the EIAs.
She added that despite claims to the contrary, the effect of seismic surveys as well as drilling cannot be ascertained without a comprehensive impact study explaining that five years into oil production and Guyana still cannot pinpoint the spatial location of sensitive environmental receptors, including offshore reefs, nurseries, and migration routes for fish and other marine life.
“The cumulative effect of all production, seismic surveys, and exploratory drilling going on the offshore environment has not been assessed. Baseline surveys on fisheries and monitoring data on the effects of all offshore activities do not exist for many key receptors.
“Each project that the EPA approves adds a burden to the uncounted and unvalued marine environment and resources that belong to present and future generations of Guyana. To date, the EPA has not been able to prove to the Guyanese people that the burden is acceptable. At a very basic level, nowhere in its Screening Reports for the Kaieteur and Canje proposed drilling activities does it even have a proper spatial representation of the areas that will be affected and/or temporal overlapping representation of times of the year and seasons, showing how drilling activities and various supply boats etc. might affect fishing vessels, fish and marine migratory routes etc. Its conclusions that the effects will be negligible are not backed by scientific proof. One would hope that the EAB would strive to see a higher standard of scientific data and reasoning,” Mangal-Joly reasoned.
Providing Bholanath with the reasoning behind her decision to boycott the hearing, Mangal-Joly said that the EAB has already indulged the EPA in “rigging the process” and that the hearing will only serve as a charade of due process, giving a false impression that the country’s legal and democratic environmental decision-making process is working.
Instead, she argued that the system is broken.
“Until the EAB can operate as a truly independent body as foreseen under the Environmental Protection Act, hearings like these will amount to an abuse of the public’s time, perversely serving as a means of democratizing the disempowerment of Guyanese people.
“I have not arrived at this conclusion lightly or from afar. It is a result of my first-hand experience with the way in which the EAB has been handling appeals over the past year, including the Demerara Harbour Bridge EIA waiver appeal, and the way you have been handling the ExxonMobil’s well drilling applications to date,” she submitted.
Mangal-Joly said that the EAB has consistently and completely failed to meet best practice standards for addressing appeals on EIA waivers in a timely and impartial manner. It allows the EPA inordinate amounts of time to develop reasons for decisions that by law must be present in full at the time the EPA makes and announces a decision to waive an EIA and triggers the 28-day public appeals period under the EP-Act.
She reminded that the public must be able to review those reasons against the EPA’s decision to decide whether the decision should be challenged. The environmentalist said that the EPA has never had its reasons available for scrutiny at the time that it gives its decisions adding that it is always allowed to take months to prepare those reasons, which it presents in ‘Screening Reports’ to bootstrap its case.
In addition, the EPA is being indulged to facilitate applicants to withdraw and resubmit applications to suit its intention of waiving EIAs, making a mockery of the EP-Act and the rule of law.
…drilling campaign, failure and complicity
The Canje Block is operated by ExxonMobil (35%), with Total Energies (35%), JHI Associates (17.5%), and Mid-Atlantic Oil & Gas Inc. (12.5%) as partners. Westmount holds a 7.2% interest in the issued share capital of JHI. While the Kaieteur Block is operated by ExxonMobil (35%), Ratio Guyana Limited (25%), Cataleya Energy Limited (20%) and Hess (20%).
In 2020, Exxon, the operator, made a non-commercial oil discovery at the Tanager-1 well in the Kaieteur block, failing to replicate a string of successes made in the nearby Stabroek offshore block, where it has so far found more than nine billion barrels of oil.
The Tanager-1 exploration well, drilled by the Stena Carron Drillship, was the deepest well drilled in the Guyana-Suriname Basin to date. It was spudded on August 11, 2020, eventually reaching a total depth of 7,633 meters.
In her letter yesterday, Mangal-Joly said that EPA posted its waiver of an EIA for ExxonMobil’s Kaieteur Block drilling application some nine months ago on September 24, 2021, giving the public 28 days to assess its reasons and object no later than October 28, 2021. She objected on October 22, 2021, outlining the technical reasons and pointing out the weak reasons the EPA published to justify its decision.
She questioned why the EAB did not hold a hearing within two weeks to even six weeks of the close of the public objection deadline in accordance with the practice in every other country in the world. She highlighted that in the time that the EAB did not hold the hearing, it indulged the EPA to publish another notice seven months later on March 7, 2022, stating that it had received an application from Exxon Mobil for the same activity in Kaieteur Block – as if ExxonMobil had never applied in the first place and a statutory appeal process had not already been triggered under the EP-Act.
“The EPA published this notice in March without any reasons in the newspapers, instead it directed the public to a Screening Report, which contained the reasons. That screening report was not made available to the public on the EPA’s website until April 5, 2022, a mere few days before the second 28-day public comment period expired. I wrote to the EAB pointing out the unfairness of this situation and the EAB ignored this. Instead, the EAB was keen to point out to me that I had to meet the new deadline to object yet again!
“In summary, the EAB allowed the EPA to simply disregard the statutory process that was triggered on September 22, 2022, plus it gave the EPA seven months to come up with reasons for its decision to waive the EIA! In what world would this be considered due process that is impartial and independent?” she questioned.
At yesterday’s hearing, Bholanath withheld her comments on Mangal-Joly’s letter informing Stabroek News that the letter was received minutes before the hearing started.
“The EAB must understand that its failure to address the relevant matter of when the EPA comes by information and provides reasons for the waivers of EIAs makes it complicit in the EPA’s actions to subvert the rule of law. An Environmental Protection Agency that openly subverts the very law it exists to uphold is a serious threat to our people and environment. An appeals body that is unable to function independently and impartially compounds this threat,” Mangal-Joly said in her letter.
The environmentalist said that she has given the given both the EPA and EAB the benefit of the doubt by engaging in due process with both bodies over the last year but explained that they are unable to act independently and apply the high standards of technical reasoning that the Act requires for decision making.
Hearing
Yesterday’s hearing still went ahead and was chaired by Bholanath and attended by the other members of the EAB – Joslyn McKenzie and Dr Garvin Cummings. The EAB members are all employees of the government. Bholanath is the Senior Director for Climate and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) in the Ministry of Natural Resources while McKenzie is the Perma-nent Secretary of the same ministry. Dr Cummings is government’s Chief Hydrometeorological Officer.
Bholanath told the hearing, attended only by employees of ExxonMobil and the EPA, that although Mangal-Joly boycotted, the EAB still has the benefit of her written submissions and will use that as part of its decision. The almost two-hour process saw a presentation from ExxonMobil and one from the EPA on the project.
Exxon presented an overview of the project and its assessment of the impacts which it concluded to be minor to negligible. While the EPA spoke about the reasoning behind its decision not to require an EIA.
They were both questioned by the EAB on the presentations.
Bholanath said that the EAB will now go ahead and consider the information before it and issue its decision as soon as possible. She noted that the information will be thoroughly reviewed and the decision communicated.
