Essequibians claim Exxon’s answers inadequate

Jan 28, 2018 ExxonMobil, News

As ExxonMobil looms closer to extracting oil from Guyana’s territorial waters, Guyanese are now thirsting for answers–primarily as to what the oil industry can mean for them.
Even with Exxon now steaming ahead with its Liza Phase 2 Development Project, Guyanese are still lacking vital information pertaining to the signed contract.
ExxonMobil during the latter part of last week, met with residents of Region Two, where they were confronted by myriads of questions. Residents of this agricultural-based community seem overly concerned about Exxon’s operations, and its impact on the environment. Region Two is home to an expanding fishing industry- which at any point can be crippled by an oil spill.
Directed to Exxon last Thursday was the question, “In the event an uncontained oil spill affects the fishing industry, would there be any compensation by Exxon for our fishermen?”
The answer to that question remains to date, indefinite. The answer provided by Exxon strayed from the company providing compensation, to them preventing an oil spill in the first place. As the consultation concluded, these countrymen departed with little to almost no assurance that they would be compensated by Exxon, in the event there is a major oil spill.
The ‘Bombshell’ of questions on last Thursday was, “Who’s gonna get the natural gas?”
The response by Exxon’s country manager, Rod Henson was, “All the gas is gonna be injected back into the reservoir to maintain pressure to sweep the reservoir…We are studying if we can divert some of the gas to get about 30 million standard cubic meter per day to shore primarily for power to help reduce the cost of electricity.”
Kaieteur News understands that processed oil will be stored in the tanks of the FPSO hull. (FPSO is the abbreviation for Floating Production Storage and Offloading). Approximately every four to six days the oil will be pumped from the FPSO to a conventional oil tanker. The tanker will then bring the oil to buyers. It is still unclear whether Guyanese would benefit from the natural gas, or just the revenue generated from the oil.
As the two-day Public Scoping meeting concluded, many expressed their dissatisfaction in the manner in which their questions were answered.
Some of the comments were, “Exxon weren’t very specific in the way they answered our questions. If they are in oil business for more than 30 years I believed that offhand they should be able to address our concerns.”

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