Al­isa De­o­nanan,

Pol­i­cy An­a­lyst,

TTEITI Sec­re­tari­at

The T&T Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (TTEITI) Steer­ing Com­mit­tee has spear­head­ed ef­forts to en­cour­age en­vi­ron­men­tal trans­paren­cy with­in EITI im­ple­men­ta­tion.

In light of re­vi­sions to the EITI Stan­dard and in­creas­ing glob­al at­ten­tion on cli­mate change, the TTEITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee made a strate­gic shift to­wards pri­ori­tis­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal trans­paren­cy via its re­port dis­clo­sures. The new EITI Stan­dard re­quires im­ple­ment­ing coun­tries to dis­close ma­te­r­i­al en­vi­ron­men­tal pay­ments to gov­ern­ments and en­cour­ages the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and mon­i­tor­ing.

In ad­vance of this man­date, the TTEITI de­vel­oped an en­vi­ron­men­tal re­port­ing pi­lot that em­pha­sis­es dis­clo­sures on key in­di­ca­tors such as GHG emis­sions, wa­ter and en­er­gy use in op­er­a­tions and in­ter­nal steps tak­en by oil and gas com­pa­nies to re­duce their car­bon foot­print.

The TTEITI re­ports al­so dis­close ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion, reg­u­la­tions and any gaps in mon­i­tor­ing. One of the key da­ta points of the TTEITI’s work on en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­clo­sures is oil spill da­ta. Oil spills spiked from 51 in 2016 to 302 in 2023. For Q1 2024, there have been 55 oil spills with 89 bar­rels spilled and ze­ro bar­rels re­cov­ered.

In 2023, T&T wit­nessed a surge in oil spills, both on land and in ma­rine en­vi­ron­ments. The num­bers marked an eight-year high in in­ci­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­istry of En­er­gy da­ta, there were 189 land-based and 113 ma­rine oil spills record­ed. This uptick is a six per cent in­crease when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

How­ev­er, as of the first quar­ter of 2024, there have been 55 oil spills. From 2016 through the ini­tial quar­ter of 2024, the na­tion ex­pe­ri­enced 1,397 oil spills, with 75.2 per cent oc­cur­ring on land. Among the af­fect­ed ar­eas, For­est Re­serve/Fyz­abad, Los Ba­jos/Pa­lo Seco/San­ta Flo­ra, and Grand Ravine/Guapo/Pt Fortin/Ce­dros/Ica­cos were iden­ti­fied as key ar­eas for on­shore in­ci­dents.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) set a thresh­old for spill re­port­ing at just one gal­lon, where­as a sin­gle bar­rel of oil con­tains 42 gal­lons. Be­tween 2016 and 2024, there was 91,758.84 bar­rels spilled, of which 83,514.63 were re­cov­ered. This trans­lates to 3.8 mil­lion gal­lons spilled and 3.5 mil­lion gal­lons re­cov­ered. There’s a sig­nif­i­cant vari­a­tion in bar­rels spilled across the years, with peaks in 2017 and 2021. How­ev­er, the per­cent­age of oil re­cov­ered fluc­tu­ates wide­ly across the years. In­ter­est­ing­ly, in 2017 and 2019, the per­cent­age of oil re­cov­ered is no­tably high com­pared to oth­er years. The mon­e­tary val­ue of oil spilled dur­ing this pe­ri­od amount­ed to $3.5 mil­lion (net, af­ter de­duct­ing re­cov­ered bar­rels).

The net val­ue of spills is cal­cu­lat­ed based on the dif­fer­ence be­tween the bar­rels spilled and those re­cov­ered, mul­ti­plied by West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate (WTI) av­er­age an­nu­al prices. Neg­a­tive val­ues in­di­cate that more oil was re­cov­ered than spilled, which is a pos­i­tive out­come for en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic rea­sons. This oc­curred in 2019 (re­fer to chart 2). Pos­i­tive val­ues sug­gest eco­nom­ic loss­es due to spills, with the high­est loss oc­cur­ring in 2023 (re­fer to chart 2). Mean­while, the gross val­ue, with­out con­sid­er­ing the re­cov­ered bar­rels, amount­ed to $32.5 mil­lion.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) plays a cru­cial role in ad­dress­ing these in­ci­dents. Fines are levied based on the sever­i­ty of the spills, with costs es­ca­lat­ing ac­cord­ing to the vol­ume spilled and the ef­fec­tive­ness of re­cov­ery ef­forts. Im­por­tant­ly, there’s no min­i­mum thresh­old for spill val­ue trig­ger­ing the use of es­crow funds. The es­crow fund, as de­fined in Ar­ti­cle 37 of the Mod­el PSC Con­tract 2018, is an in­ter­est-bear­ing ac­count es­tab­lished in the Min­is­ter’s name at a des­ig­nat­ed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. Its pur­pose is to ac­cu­mu­late funds con­tributed by the con­trac­tor to cov­er po­ten­tial pol­lu­tion, well aban­don­ment, and fa­cil­i­ty de­com­mis­sion­ing costs as­so­ci­at­ed with pe­tro­le­um op­er­a­tions in the con­tract area.

The con­trac­tor is re­quired to de­posit twen­ty-five cents per bar­rel of oil equiv­a­lent pro­duced in­to this ac­count from the date of first pro­duc­tion.

Funds from the es­crow ac­count are utilised to fi­nance the ap­proved pro­gramme for aban­don­ment and de­com­mis­sion­ing of fa­cil­i­ties, as agreed up­on by the Min­is­ter and con­trac­tor. The to­tal bal­ance of the es­crow ac­counts as of Sep­tem­ber 2021, stands at US$94 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to the EITI Re­port 2021, the MEEI al­so has plans to en­hance its spill-mon­i­tor­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. This in­volves the pro­cure­ment of ear­ly de­tec­tion radar sys­tems, aimed at bol­ster­ing the na­tion’s abil­i­ty to swift­ly re­spond to oil spill in­ci­dents.

The in­crease in oil spills seen in 2023 re­in­forces the need to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment. It un­der­scores the im­por­tance of proac­tive mon­i­tor­ing, hav­ing more strin­gent reg­u­la­tions in place, and in­vest­ment as well as use of tech­nol­o­gy to mit­i­gate im­pact. As the coun­try grap­ples with the dual chal­lenges of meet­ing en­er­gy de­mands while safe­guard­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, EITI da­ta dis­clo­sures pro­vide a pil­lar for pol­i­cy dis­cus­sion on en­vi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship.