…as First Oil looms in Guyana
With first oil just around the corner, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Head, Dr Vincent Adams has admitted that Guyana is “not even close” to having the requisite expertise to manage the oil and gas sector.
He made this admission during a public policy talk facilitated by the Guyana Budget Policy Institute last Saturday evening at the Regency Suites Hotel. Dr Adams shared the panel with a number of political and oil and gas commentators, including Christopher Ram, Charles Ramson and Sasenarine Singh.
“This is very, very new to us. When oil and gas was discovered, the environmental laws and regulations were written in 1996. So we are now admittedly in our infancy stage. We do not have our national regulations. We do not have the expertise or capacity, not even close,” Adams said.
Adams used as an example the difficulty EPA is faced with in hiring the professionals it needs, particularly those in science and engineering. According to Adams, the University of Guyana (UG) has not been much help in this regard.
There is some good news, however, as he noted that they are in the process of finalising the oil and gas unit, with the assistance of the World Bank. According to Adams, the unit will have approximately 35 to 40 staff, fully dedicated to the sector.
“For the past seven months, they’ve been helping me put together an oil and gas unit and I think we’re just about to finalise it, where we have 36 or 40 people, just designated for oil and gas oversight”.
“Of course, we’d need high-powered engineers and scientists and some other managers that without question, I know are not available in this country. So that’s going to be another challenge. How can we get them on board, to get them to manage this sector in an effective manner?”
The EPA Head also cited the potential role the diaspora could play in Guyana’s oil sector, as he noted that the disadvantage of hiring foreigners versus Guyanese nationals includes the money it will take to pay them.
“It’s going to cost us a lot more money for expertise coming from outside, rather than nationals. I think the diaspora is a major resource of talent that we ought to be using. As many of us know, the migration that we had, we need to turn that so-called brain drain back into gain,” he said.
Government has come under much criticisms in the past few years for seemingly being bested by oil companies during negotiations for contracts and production-sharing agreements. In the case of Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman, he claimed to have acted under orders when he agreed to a one per cent recoverable royalty with UK oil company, Tullow.
In the case of the environment, the Government has been criticised for the delay in approving an oil spill contingency plan, after the EPA promised one would be completed by mid-2019. Guyana’s last taste of an environmental disaster was a cyanide spill in 1995. In gold mining, cyanide is used as an extracting agent for the ore. In the case of Guyana’s cyanide spill, the highly poisonous material spilled out of a reservoir into the Essequibo River.
Since ExxonMobil announced its oil find in the Liza-1 well in 2015, a pertinent question has been the capacity of the relevant agencies to protect the environment in case of an oil spill. It is a topic that has regularly been raised at public lectures.
Previously, President David Granger commissioned Guyana’s first oil spill response operation service at the Gaico Wharf at Nismes, West Bank Demerara: Gaico Oil Spill Response Operation Services. The service was set up as a pre-emptive measure against probable spillage once production commences in the future.
A study by the EPA had found that while an oil spill was possible, factors such as the location of ExxonMobil affiliates’ operations, combined with the region’s water temperature would minimise the effects.
On the side of the Government, it is understood that efforts have been underway to train and build capacity in the Natural Resources Ministry. When it comes to the oil spill contingency plan, a workshop was organised in March of this year to work on the draft. Civil Defence Commission (CDC) Head, Colonel Kester Craig was recently quoted saying that the long overdue plan was almost complete.
