CSA Ocean Sciences Inc. (CSA), an American company that specializes in monitoring potential environmental impacts of activities throughout the world, is teaming up with Environmental Management Consultants Inc. (EMC)., )., a Guyanese company, to cater to the increasing needs of the oil industry.
According to a statement by CSA, it is inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with EMC towards this end and is in the process of establishing a Master Service Agreement as per the requirements of the Local Content Law.
Guyana Standard understands that CSA Ocean Sciences Inc. was recently invited to Guyana by EMC to visit their facilities and conduct cooperative in-country business development specific to offshore marine environmental services.
The Guyana visit was attended by Gordon Stevens, CSA President; Bruce Graham, CSA Senior Scientist with considerable regional and in-country experience; and Dr. Chris Kelly, CSA Vice President, Science and Technology.
As part of the Guyana visit, EMC had arranged a meeting with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As part of this meeting, CSA prepared and narrated a brief interactive presentation on its experience with oil and gas industry offshore marine services, CSA experience with international regulatory interactions, and its identification of Guyana-specific potential regulatory concerns.
The engagement had agency-wide attendance and was well received based on the provision of information concerning the effects of deepwater oil and gas production activities. This is indeed progressing in Guyana at an accelerated rate with the deployment of a third floating production, storage, and offloading vessel in the offshore Stabroek Block operated by ExxonMobil Guyana.
CSA said one output from the engagement was the identification of in-country capacity building initiatives, such as the training of in-country Protected Species Observers (PSOs). PSO services are currently in high demand regionally due the amount of oil and gas activities offshore Guyana.
CSA previously provided regional PSO training in Trinidad. The PSO training course is designed to teach an overview of offshore seismic survey mitigation and vessel strike avoidance monitoring for marine species.
This news agency understands that there is an opportunity for CSA, in collaboration with EMC, to offer this training in Guyana.
