The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) met with up­stream oil and gas op­er­a­tors in what it de­scribed as a stake­hold­er en­gage­ment ses­sion aimed at ad­dress­ing con­cerns sur­round­ing the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) per­mit­ting process.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the EMA said the meet­ing was in­tend­ed to fos­ter con­struc­tive, so­lu­tion-ori­ent­ed di­a­logue on op­er­a­tors’ ex­pe­ri­ences nav­i­gat­ing the CEC frame­work, while al­so al­low­ing the EMA to out­line op­er­a­tional con­straints and reg­u­la­to­ry con­sid­er­a­tions that af­fect the time­ly pro­cess­ing of ap­pli­ca­tions and post-CEC re­quire­ments. The au­thor­i­ty said the en­gage­ment forms part of its on­go­ing ef­fort to strength­en col­lab­o­ra­tion, im­prove trans­paren­cy and en­hance the over­all ef­fi­cien­cy of the per­mit­ting sys­tem.

The ses­sion was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by EMA chair­man Doolar Ram­lal, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor (Ag) Wayne Ra­jku­mar and mem­bers of the CEC Unit. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at­tend­ed from bpTT, EOG Re­sources Trinidad, Lease Op­er­a­tors, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, 360 Oil and Gas, A&V Oil and Gas, Exxon­Mo­bil Trinidad and To­ba­go Deep­wa­ter, Peren­co Trinidad and To­ba­go, Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration (Trinidad), Sum­mit En­er­gy Ser­vices and Shell Trinidad & To­ba­go.

Ram­lal reaf­firmed the board’s com­mit­ment to im­prov­ing the time­li­ness and ef­fec­tive­ness of ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tions, while sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus on im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness and ad­vanc­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in line with na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties. He said stake­hold­er feed­back is crit­i­cal in iden­ti­fy­ing prac­ti­cal mea­sures to re­fine the CEC process and strength­en the wider en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment frame­work.

Nisha Ram­sa­hai, man­ag­er of Knowl­edge Man­age­ment, said one of the main chal­lenges in the per­mit­ting process re­lates to the col­lec­tion, man­age­ment and shar­ing of base­line en­vi­ron­men­tal da­ta. She said the Au­thor­i­ty in­tends to work to­ward es­tab­lish­ing a struc­tured da­ta repos­i­to­ry to al­low more seam­less in­for­ma­tion shar­ing among stake­hold­ers, with the aim of re­duc­ing du­pli­ca­tion and im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy.

Sal­ly Ma­haraj, En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­gramme Of­fi­cer III, said op­er­a­tors of­ten have the re­quired da­ta, but there can be un­cer­tain­ty about the spe­cif­ic datasets need­ed and the for­mat for sub­mis­sion. She said clear­er guid­ance, stronger co­or­di­na­tion, and im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the EMA and op­er­a­tors are nec­es­sary to en­sure com­pli­ant ap­pli­ca­tions. Dis­cus­sions al­so ex­am­ined the cur­rent five-year da­ta pe­ri­od used in as­sess­ments and whether that time­frame should be re­viewed, as well as the im­por­tance of en­gag­ing suit­ably qual­i­fied con­sul­tants in prepar­ing sub­mis­sions.

Op­er­a­tors de­scribed the meet­ing as pro­duc­tive. Glenn God­dard, en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial dis­ci­pline lead at bpTT, said the Au­thor­i­ty was re­cep­tive to in­dus­try con­cerns and com­mend­ed its col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach. Rhea de Gourville, HSE man­ag­er at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration (Trinidad) Ltd, said par­tic­i­pants shared sim­i­lar chal­lenges and viewed the en­gage­ment as a pos­i­tive step.