HYDROCARBON EXPLORATION IN THE TROPICAL RAINFOREST

Hydrocarbon exploration in the tropical rainforest



Aim and Objectives

To facilitate an understanding of likely environmental impacts associated with oil and gas exploration and production.

Introduction

A great number of the safeguard policies instrumented by World Bank are enforced from ten years to each and every project funded by the World Bank. This report concentrates on the impact of the evaluation of spheres of the environment that may be impacted and manage the interaction of project actions on key environmental receptors. This also includes the application of operating principles of EIA to critically evaluate the broad environmental and social impacts of petroleum extraction and processing.

Any project initiated by World Bank requires complying with the National environment policies in the country of operation and by the help of safeguard policies of World Bank beside the Health, Safety and Environmental guidelines which are supposed to be ignited by such kind of project (Pollution Prevention and Abatement Handbook, 1998).

The initial step in this situation is the formulation of a comprehensive Safeguard datasheet, which is a sorting instrument which gives the project description, with transparent and complete specification of the social and environmental and social impacts and gives a foundation for the categorization of projects in different categories such as A, B, C, and FI.

Discussion

All the gas and oil pipeline based projects have been categorized as Category A projects, which states that a complete Environmental Assessment (EA) requires to be prepared. Such kind of projects are usually funded by World bank and can be initiated only when a satisfied Environmental Assessment (EA), Resettlement Action Plan (RAP) or other needed safeguard documents have been made, which also further needed to be approved by World Bank and the administration of concerned States and clearly disclosed in the concerned countries. It also needed to be disclosing in the Info shop in Washington can be presentable enough to be propose for the appraisement (World Bank Safeguard Policy requirement). The disclosure of the documents which are related to the safeguard policies requires taking place at least 120 working days before Board presentation (Pelosi Amendment, which is a US requirement). For all major projects which are based on infrastructure making, the making of Safeguard documents can take a time up to 2.5 years.

The three different Organizations of the World Bank Group including the Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank proper, constitute of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) in combination with International Diploma Association (IDA) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) have made Environmental, Social, Rural development and the safeguard policies which are legal in nature.

The guidelines set by World Bank Group Organizations deviate from each other with more or less insignificance. These variations are due to the differences in the clients of these three organizations (Bryant I. & et al, 2012).

From 2000, there have been solid efforts to integrate the environmental and social standards of bilateral and multinational banks along with foreign insurers and credit ...