Tsunami risk to Guyana is real, though minimal – EIA

Apr 28, 2024 News

A section of the EIA which speaks to the potential risk of a tsunami.

Kaieteur News – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday downplayed a Kaieteur News report published on April 21, 2024, that said seismic activities being carried out in the Stabroek Block have the potential to cause a tsunami in Guyana.

In its response, the EPA said that the public Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) document referenced by this newspaper contextualizes the activities in the Production Development Area (PDA) in relation to various natural disasters, including Tsunamis, as part of a comprehensive futuristic EIA assessment of risk.

The EPA said that under the heading ‘Natural Hazard Risk Ratings for Guyana’ findings from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) assessments in 2014 were mentioned.

“These assessments, conducted as part of a global initiative, identified floods, droughts, and landslides as the most significant risks to Guyana based on historical records. Notably, historical data did not indicate tsunami risk to Guyana.

Nevertheless, futuristic assessments by UNISDR took into account the potential impact of tsunamis on Guyana. According to UNISDR 2014, while floods pose the most significant risk, the risks from earthquakes and tsunamis were deemed not significant enough to be included in the economic analysis due to their predicted low recurrence interval,”the EPA said.

However, the EPA’s rebuttal does ignore the section of the EIA that specifically says “Guyana could experience tsunamis generated from seismic activity outside Guyana if such activity propagated waves of sufficient magnitude and in the required direction. Most of the available research on seismic risk in the region has focused on three potential locations where seismic activity could originate.”

This is documented in Clause “7.4.4.3. Assessment of Tsunami Risks to Guyana” of the EIA. Additionally, the EIA that was vetted by the EPA states, “Additionally, the World Bank Group’s ThinkHazard! tool, an online, natural hazard risk database for emerging market countries, was queried to assess relative risk ratings for a suite of potential natural hazards for Guyana. The results of the assessment are generally consistent with the UNISDR assessment, ranking floods as high risk, tsunamis as medium risk, and earthquakes as very low risk for Guyana (World Bank 2020).”

Also contained in the approved EIA is that the company found in its modelling surveys, “the same would be true of seismic activity along the western portion of the Puerto Rico Trench. Guyana could theoretically be exposed to a tsunami that arose at the extreme eastern end of the Puerto Rico Trench and propagated southward.”

As intimated by the EPA, in its response, the EIA does indicate that, “the area offshore of Guyana has a very low risk of exposure to seismic events; therefore, the Project is considered to have a negligible potential to result in seismic risk. Guyana is naturally buffered from the effects of a potential tsunami originating at most of the known seismically active zones in the region, even in the extremely unlikely event that such an event occurred.”

According to the EIA conducted by ExxonMobil, the Whiptail Project’s drilling activities would not have a reasonable potential to affect seismic stability at the areas identified in the region as the nearest areas having an elevated seismic risk are approximately 294 kilometers away from the Production Development Area.

The EPA however contends definitely the EIA for ExxonMobil’s 6th oil project (Whiptail Development Project) does not indicate any link between the proposed project’s activities and Tsunamis.

It insists that Tsunamis are natural events resulting from undersea earthquakes caused by movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates.

However, the environmental body does concede that the EIA informs that the likelihood of natural events such as tsunamis impacting the Development Project is minimal.

According to the EIA, “The Project has very low potential to affect seismic risk—the risk of earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis, and other natural events related to movements in the earth’s crust.”

• droughts, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Guyana, published, tsunami