Following concerns over the repeated use of one consultant for the environmental surveys for ExxonMobil’s operations here, a different company was selected for the oil major’s fifth planned offshore project but the controversy is likely to rumble on.
Acorn International, which like ExxonMobil is headquartered in Houston, Texas in the US is the company that will take over from Environmental Resources Management (ERM). At a public scoping meeting at the Umana Yana yesterday for the Uaru project, Acorn stated that it had been selected by project developer, ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, EEPGL and had gotten a no-objection from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This procedure is not in compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency Act as has been pointed out by environmentalists.
