No flaring beyond prescribed limit on Guyana’s FPSOs – Min. Bharrat
Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat has assured that there is no flaring of natural gas beyond the prescribed limit on any of Guyana’s Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels.
Minister Bharrat was at the time responding to a question on whether flaring would reduce the amount of gas available for Guyana, during the televised programme, ‘The Guyana Dialogue.’
Flaring, a common practice in the oil and gas industry, is the controlled burning of excess natural gas to prevent it from building up and potentially causing an explosion.
When natural gas is produced alongside crude oil, it needs to be separated and processed before it can be transported and sold as a valuable energy resource.
However, if there is no infrastructure available to process or transport the natural gas, or if it is not economical to do so, the gas may be flared instead.
“To date, we are still working with Exxon to quantify our final deposit, but I can say safely, that we have records to show there are about 16 trillion cubic feet of gas that have already been discovered, and this is in the Stabroek Block, where Exxon is the operator.
“We have a few pure gas fields that have been discovered, but what has happened, and what is necessary to optimise oil production, is the re-injection of gas into the wells, to pressurise it to ensure that we optimise production. But in terms of flaring, there is no flaring beyond the prescribed limit on any of our FPSOS presently,” Minister Bharrat stated.
He recalled that in 2021, there was an issue with the discharge silencer of the flash gas compressor on one of Guyana’s FPSOs, the Liza Destiny. However, that issue was rectified and the vessel has been functioning well for the last year and a half.
He noted too that when the problem with the flash gas compressor arose, the government instituted a US $50 fee per tonne of gas flared, which Exxon had been paying.
The decision was guided by the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP), which is prescribed by the Environmental Protection Act of 1996.
“So, the issue has been fixed, and we don’t have that issue of flaring offshore anymore,” Minister Bharrat added.