There is a deeper significance to what the former Head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Dr. Vincent Adams had to say recently about the necessity for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study to precede the advancement of the gas-to-shore project which, it would seem, envisages the landing of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) at Wales and the establishment of a Plant there as part of the process of providing a cheap energy source for the people of Guyana, hopefully a decisive game-changer insofar as the trajectory of our development process is concerned.
In an odd sort of way this discourse is neither about liquefied gas nor about Wales but about the quality of the governance process as a whole and in this particular instance, the right of Guyanese to be kept abreast of the country’s evolving oil and gas ‘journey.’
More than five years after the first major oil and gas disclosures we remain, as a nation, largely unschooled on the technicalities of the industry and on the complex details of the oil and gas recovery process and the various ways, material and environmental, among others, in which, as a nation, we will be impacted. Here one might add that while, post-2015 a relative handful of persons have acquired a limited measure of formal and informal schooling in some aspects of the oil and gas industry, they, manifestly cannot at this juncture, be considered experts in what is clearly a particularly compartmentalized and complex discipline. Beyond the various branches of technical expertise associated with the oil and gas industry there is also the need for a wider functional education process structured to embrace what, in our instance, is a largely clueless population. Truth be told, the extent of oil and gas knowledge amongst the populace as a whole is largely limited to the envisaged economic returns from oil and gas earnings. Here one must point out that it is equally important that, as a people, we understand, as well, the various other ways, not least the environmental ones, in which the country will be affected in the much longer term.
Responsibility for that broader education process, which, one hastens to add, has to be a structured one, lies in the hands of the political administration in office. Here, we hasten to add that that process is yet to get underway in earnest.
What is being described as the Wales gas-to-shore project is the current oil and gas ‘hot topic.’ Here, one must add that the fact of a severely retarded if not altogether non-existent public education process excludes the citizenry as a whole from the discourse. Frankly, we seriously doubt whether even the people residing in the Wales community itself possess a full understanding of all of the implications of the project for their community, assuming that Wales turns out to be the selected site.
Here, we need to cut to the chase. The fact is that the only pertinent issue in this matter at this time is whether or not the people of Wales and the citizenry as a whole are possessed of all the information necessary to either make an enlightened decision in the matter or else, to even participate in an illuminating discourse. Or will this turn out to be one of those all too familiar instances of official setting aside of the public’s right to know and to be an enlightened part of the decision-making process and putting in its place the familiar collaring of the national conscience as a means of going over our collective heads in the advancement of this particular project.
Setting aside the functional desirability of a prior environmental impact assessment study, a course of action which Dr. Adams vehemently and correctly advocates, the former Head of the EPA has left no doubt in his public pronouncement about the importance of citizen participation in the process. This is almost certainly the best way through which our understanding of aspects of the oil and gas industry can be incrementally enhanced. That apart, public involvement in any impact assessment process will afford at least some measure of broader understanding of the various ways, including those that have to do with matters of health and safety in which the gas to shore development will affect us directly.
There is no rocket science here. One would have to be altogether unhinged to kick against a prior initiative that seeks to involve the targeted beneficiaries thereof in a process that would doubtless enhance their understanding of its significance.
Contextually, it would hardly have escaped the attention of those of us who have been trying to keep up with all of the various twists and turns in the evolution of our oil and gas ‘development’ that the Private Sector Commission (PSC) through its current Chairman, Nicholas Boyer, has ‘gone public,’ articulating its support for the Wales option insofar as the gas-to-shore project is concerned. The right of the PSC to embrace what one might call the Wales option is, of course, not in question here though the point surely must be made that the private sector’s prerogative surely does not gainsay the note struck by Dr. Adams in the matter of his recommended environmental impact assessment study. The essence of his point steers clear of what one might call the ‘Wales or not Wales’ argument and focuses unerringly on enhancing national understanding of the implications of the project, whether the gas is landed at Wales or Wismar, for the well-being of the nation and of which ever community is selected to host the facility.
The key point that arises here has to do with whether or not the Guyanese people as a whole are not being deemed to be an entirely peripheral audience insofar as the gas to shore issue is concerned. It is this, it seems, that Dr. Adams is seeking to avert.
There can be no question than that the incremental growth of the across-the-board national oil and gas knowledge base has to be extended beyond just the anticipated developmental returns, even though we are not even remotely suggesting that those returns are not important. Here, one might add that in this instance the proclivity of the custodians of the state of excluding the nation as a whole from the consultative and decision-making processes in matters of critical importance has become sufficiently historically ingrained to cause us to be inclined, in this instance, to embrace Dr. Adams’ environmental impact assessment initiative which he clearly sees as an option, perhaps the best one, for helping to enhance public understanding of critical aspects of our oil and gas industry and some of the ways in which it is likely to affect us.
That being said the question arises as to whether the PSC possesses a sufficiently comprehensive knowledge of all the issues here to pronounce with the kind of equivocation that it did regarding its support for the landing of the LNG at Wales. At the time Mr. Boyer articulated what may well have been a number of well-meaning reasons for the PSC’s position though, of course, we respectfully add that we are not aware that the PSC can speak for the entire community likely to be affected by the project.
Dr. Adams takes a different line which steers clear of naming Wales or Watooka, for that matter, as the preferred site for the landing of the LNG. Instead he makes the altogether uncomplicated point that an Environmental Impact Assessment should be undertaken. It is, we believe, not without significance that Dr. Adams goes to some trouble to urge that there be some measure of public participation in the process. That is his way of saying that the people who will be affected by the outcomes of the decision must of necessity be part of a satisfactory prior contemplation process.
