Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-Minded Part 158
Introduction
On May 17, 2025, the National Assembly passed the Oil Pollution Prevention, Preparedness, Response, and Responsibility Bill on a voice vote. The bill’s thirty-seven clauses and three schedules were considered en bloc, meaning that no clause-by-clause examination was conducted. One wonders whether the Speaker or the Mover of the bill wanted to avoid a critical analysis of the Bill’s provisions.
It may be coincidental that the architects have incorporated the ubiquitous PPP into the title. In any case, a Bill should be judged not by its title or acronyms, however unique, but by its contents. On that basis, when evaluated against international standards, this law collapses under its own inadequacies. In coming to this conclusion, I assessed the Bill against ten criteria drawn from international best practice, including the experience of countries like the United States, Canada, and Norway, as well as the principles set out in global instruments such as the IMO’s Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response Convention (1990). These criteria are not academic – they reflect solid, real-life experience.
Each has been forged in the crucible of real oil spills, corporate denials, and costly public clean-ups. They cover the core elements of effective legislation: scope, prevention, monitoring, financing, preparedness, liability, penalties, public participation, institutional design, and legal coherence. Although a senior Minister ruled out any input from me in the discussion on the Bill as “unhelpful”, what follows is not a partisan view – it is a professional assessment based on years of studying and writing on Oil and Gas.
Poor grade
The analysis reveals that the Guyana Bill falls short of meeting objective standards: it is non-compliant with eight of the ten standards, partially compliant with two, and fully compliant with none.
“Strong” = Fully or substantially compliant; “Moderate” = Partially compliant or significant compliance with notable gaps; “Weak” = non-compliant or largely deficient
Structural weaknesses
There is no definition for the critical term “petroleum operations” in the Bill. The term is defined in the 1986 Petroleum Exploration and Production Act, adopted in the 1999 Agreement, and defined differently in the 2021 Petroleum Activities Act. Littering the Bill with undefined, critical terms like pipelines, transportation systems, subcontractors – often the source of actual pollution – is not just poor drafting, but an open invitation for litigation. The “helpful input” from relevant industry experts is woefully lacking. And that is not one of the ten criteria!
While Clause 12 imposes a general duty to prevent pollution, it delegates sweeping regulatory powers to the Minister, without prescribing scope, principles, or limitations. Even more troubling, the Minister is authorised to amend all three Schedules to the Bill by negative resolution, which avoids parliamentary scrutiny. In the context of a largely dormant National Assembly, this backdoor lawmaking is inappropriate and dangerous. Further, the Bill defers critical technical standards to future regulations, effectively legislating in blank. And while it references substantial penalties, it is silent on enforcement architecture: no inspectors, timelines or triggers.
Notable absences
Despite its ambitions, the Bill stops short of establishing a proper licensing regime for oil spill preparedness and response. Instead, it requires only the approval of contingency plans — an administrative hurdle rather than a substantive regulatory gatekeeping mechanism. This means that an operator may legally function without ever being granted or held to a formal licence under this Act. Compounding this shortfall is the Bill’s treatment of financial responsibility. While it nominally requires responsible parties to maintain financial assurance, it defers the standard by allowing coverage only “as far as practicable.” This vague qualifier erodes the principle of strict liability. It opens the door to discretionary interpretations and potential evasions – a troubling prospect in a country exposed to high-risk petroleum operations and limited enforcement capacity.
On liability and obligations, the Bill makes any director, manager, or secretary personally liable only if the offence is proved to have been committed with their consent or connivance. These are high thresholds for a prosecutor to overcome. If the framers were serious about prevention, they could have made the more egregious cases strict liability offences, shifting the burden onto those responsible for compliance, rather than requiring the prosecution to prove mental elements like intent or collusion.
Monitoring obligations fare no better. Operators must report pollution as soon as it occurs (Clause 14). Responsible parties must submit an oil spill contingency plan to the CDC, and Clause 29 requires them to conduct periodic inspections following that plan. But notably, it is empowered to audit only the records, not to conduct a physical or other inspection.
To be continued
In the next column, we will examine the special case of ships, funding, the relevance of the 2016 Agreement and guaranties and indemnities.