EPA ignores concerns of unsigned EIA submitted by Exxon for 5th project

Feb 21, 2023 News

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…commences consultation with incomplete study

Kaieteur News – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday commenced a series of consultations with the public to discuss impacts from ExxonMobil’s fifth oil project- Uaru- even though the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which forms the foundation for the discussions, is incomplete.

Environmentalist, Simone Mangal-Joly in a letter to the Executive Director of the EPA, Kemraj Parsram dated February 18, 2023, alerted the regulator that the EIA submitted by Exxon’s consultant, Acorn International is not certified since the developer’s signature is missing.

As pointed out before, this can have serious ramifications as the company can walk away disowning the study in the future.

Yesterday, the EPA started public stakeholder engagement even though the study has not been signed. Efforts to contact Parsram were not successful.

In the meantime, Mangal-Joly in an invited comment told this newspaper that she has not received a response from the Head of the EPA regarding such a serious violation of the engagement process.

She explained that the government has long had the commendable practice of making certified EIA documents available on the EPA’s website. This departure and previous departures from established practice in relation to ExxonMobil’s applications undermine public trust and confidence in the fairness and quality of the Environmental Assessment Process and begs the question of Exxon’s commitment to good Environmental and Social Governance practices, she said.

Exxon’s EIA for the Uaru project was published by the EPA since January 8, 2023. This date also marked the commencement of a 60-day comments period in which members of the public can offer comments or questions.

According to Mangal-Joly, “The 60-day EIA public comment period has not been triggered, as the EPA has not followed the law. It has failed to provide a document on its website that can be identified as an EIA submitted by ExxonMobil in relation to the company’s application for an environmental permit.”

In the absence of the company’s signature, she argued that the public has no way of knowing where the document on the EPA’s website came from and whether it is complete and truthful. As such, the environmentalist insisted, “The process must stop and the EPA must restart the 60-day public comment period on the date that the full and certified EIA becomes available through all means advertised in the Public Notice.”

She reasoned that by continuing to hold oral consultation meetings, while the public is deprived of the certified EIA, both the EPA and ExxonMobil are violating basic principles of fair consultation as well as citizens’ rights to information and to be consulted as specified by the Environmental Protection Act.

In fact, she believes even Acorn International is equally responsible.

“The consultants involved in the preparation of this study are complicit whether knowingly or inadvertently. Their obligation to ensure an authentic stakeholder engagement process does not end when they submit a draft Environmental Impact Assessment. They are obligated to consider the feedback the public provides in the 60-day comment period in any revisions of the EIA and in their submission of a final document,” Mangal-Joly explained.

She added, “If public feedback has been tampered with in anyway – either by failure to provide a certified and verified complete and accurate document or otherwise – then both the veracity and technical quality of their study becomes suspect. To be clear, procedural fairness is particularly impactful in the conduct of an EIA. Procedural fairness not only affects the public’s legal rights but also the scope and depth of technical analyses. The public performs a fundamental and complementary role to technical specialists in the development of an EIA. The Public is a co-constructor of an EIA, as stakeholders are best placed to identify and interrogate the various ways in which their interests may be affected.”

The Environmentalist told Kaieteur News that the EPA cannot argue that a certified and complete copy of the EIA is available in hard copy at their office or elsewhere as the documents on the website must be identical to those housed elsewhere.

Similarly, she noted that the regulator also cannot argue that the Environmental Protection Act does not require web disclosure, since the agency undertook to provide it by that means and inform the public of such.

An EIA forms the foundation for a permit to be granted to a developer by the EPA. The document is intended to clearly outline the risks a project can cause and state measures that will be taken to mitigate or respond to such events. Given the important nature of the document, project developers are required to affix their signature/s to guarantee that they not only accept the environmental study, but more importantly, its findings and assurances for response activities. By attaching their signatures, it legally ties the company to accept liabilities caused as a result of the listed impacts, likely to be caused.

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• Environmental protection, Environmentalist, Impact, Mangal-Joly, Simone Mangal-Joly

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