EMA engages consultants on CEC permitting process

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) held a stake­hold­er ses­sion with con­sul­tants who pro­vide ser­vices to up­stream oil and gas com­pa­nies as part of work on the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) per­mit­ting process.

Chair­man Doolar Ram­lal and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor (Ag.) Wayne Ra­jku­mar led the meet­ing with mem­bers of the CEC and Per­mit Mon­i­tor­ing and Com­pli­ance Units. The ses­sion fol­lowed a pri­or meet­ing with up­stream op­er­a­tors. The EMA pre­sent­ed is­sues, pri­or­i­ties and rec­om­men­da­tions from op­er­a­tors and in­vit­ed in­put from con­sul­tants on the CEC process.

Man­ag­er Per­mit­ting Vid­jaya Ramkha­lawan said con­sul­tants link project com­po­nents and reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments. Dis­cus­sions ad­dressed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­sis­ten­cy and sub­mis­sions. Par­tic­i­pants re­viewed steps to sup­port a sin­gle per­mit­ting process.

The EMA and con­sul­tants dis­cussed the CEC por­tal and steps to change the process, in­clud­ing work to place the ap­pli­ca­tion cy­cle on a dig­i­tal plat­form. The ses­sion al­so cov­ered a geospa­tial da­ta do­main to sup­port plan­ning and de­ci­sion-mak­ing and steps to al­low da­ta shar­ing among agen­cies and stake­hold­ers.

Par­tic­i­pants ad­dressed du­pli­ca­tion in sub­mis­sions, da­ta plan­ning and analy­sis across re­gions and co­or­di­na­tion with oil and gas op­er­a­tors. The ses­sion al­so cov­ered tech­ni­cal lan­guage, guid­ance with­in the per­mit­ting frame­work and ap­proval work­flows through process map­ping.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer George Sam­my of Eco­engi­neer­ing Con­sul­tants Lim­it­ed said the dis­cus­sions ad­dressed the CEC and En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment process­es. Oceanog­ra­ph­er and Di­rec­tor Frank Teelucks­ingh of Coastal Dy­nam­ics Lim­it­ed said the ses­sion al­lowed in­put on the CEC process and fu­ture dis­cus­sions.