The Environmental Protection Agency will be moving to further increase its overall capacity to monitor the oil sector now that Guyana has officially become an oil-producing nation.

Budget constraints, however, have prevented the agency from rolling out its full capacity. 

At a luncheon of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association today, Executive Director of the EPA, Dr. Vincent Adams said plans remain in place for the transformation of the EPA to better take on the challenges and concerns of the oil sector.

“Next year we are hoping to have our full complement of staff and hopefully, a new building because currently where we are, it’s no way that’s going to hold everybody we are going to need to have” Adams said 

Dr. Adams noted that the EPA has its plan and will be pushing that plan forward when budget preparations begin after the upcoming elections. 

He said his Agency was forced to put a hold on many of its plans at the moment because of budgeting constraints.

“It’s going be dependent on what my budget is. For the first half of the year, we have got to ratchet down some of what we are planning because we only are getting 1/12 of last year’s spending, which may not be whole lot to carry us through the first six months and whatever happens in the next six months, we are going to have to figure out what to do. So it’s all going to be dependent on funding”, he explained.

The Environmental Protection Agency will be pushing for its own laboratory and specialized staff to assist it in both capacity building and greater monitoring of the oil sector. 

There have been calls for greater environmental monitoring of the new oil production sector for Guyana. 

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