EMA meets upstream oil and gas operators on CEC process

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) held a stake­hold­er en­gage­ment ses­sion with up­stream oil and gas op­er­a­tors on Tues­day to dis­cuss the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance per­mit­ting process.

The meet­ing was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Chair­man Doolar Ram­lal and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor (Ag.) Wayne Ra­jku­mar, along with mem­bers of the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance Unit. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at­tend­ed from BP Trinidad and To­ba­go LLC, EOG Re­sources Trinidad Lim­it­ed, Lease Op­er­a­tors Lim­it­ed, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, 360 Oil and Gas Lim­it­ed, A&V Oil and Gas Lim­it­ed, Exxon­Mo­bil Trinidad and To­ba­go Deep­wa­ter Lim­it­ed, Peren­co Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed, Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, Sum­mit En­er­gy Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and Shell Trinidad & To­ba­go Lim­it­ed.

Chair­man Ram­lal stat­ed that the Board of Di­rec­tors is fo­cused on im­prov­ing ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tions while sup­port­ing Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy on ease of do­ing busi­ness and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

Man­ag­er Knowl­edge Man­age­ment Nisha Ram­sa­hai said a chal­lenge in the per­mit­ting process in­volves the col­lec­tion, man­age­ment and shar­ing of base­line en­vi­ron­men­tal da­ta. She said the Au­thor­i­ty in­tends to work to­ward a da­ta repos­i­to­ry to fa­cil­i­tate in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and re­duce du­pli­ca­tion.

En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­gram­mer Of­fi­cer III Sal­ly Ma­haraj said op­er­a­tors may have da­ta but there can be un­cer­tain­ty about re­quired datasets and sub­mis­sion for­mats. She said guid­ance, co­or­di­na­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are re­quired to en­sure com­pli­ant sub­mis­sions.

Dis­cus­sions al­so ad­dressed the five-year da­ta pe­ri­od used in as­sess­ments and the en­gage­ment of con­sul­tants to pre­pare ap­pli­ca­tions.

En­vi­ron­men­tal and So­cial Dis­ci­pline Lead Glenn God­dard of BP Trinidad and To­ba­go LLC and HSE Man­ag­er Rhea de Gourville of Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed said the meet­ing al­lowed di­a­logue on shared chal­lenges.

The meet­ing end­ed with agree­ment to con­tin­ue en­gage­ment and con­sid­er a shared da­ta repos­i­to­ry.