Sam Hinds on the fuel license cancellation

Jun 29, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor;
A Government can end a licence for good cause and according to set procedures which seek to assure fair play. In this regard, the Government needs to state its position on the article in Kaieteur News of Monday 27, June, entitled “Govt. Scraps Oil exportation licence Sam Hinds gave Chinese”.
The headline is obviously intended to startle, grab attention and borders on being xenophobic. One expects in the article a clear statement of good grounds for scrapping the licence after the usual requirement for reasonable opportunity for the licensee to be heard. No such is presented.
The scrapping must demonstrably not be an irrational, capricious act of whimsy or spite, or great harm would be done in scaring investors, both foreign and local, existing and prospective. Unfortunately the article gives no good reason for scrapping the licence: indeed it mixes up a number of different aspects. It does repeat the PPP/C government’s position on granting the licence: “to facilitate a proposal by China Zhonghao Inc. to establish refuelling and other bunker services in port or at sea, to Chinese or other fishing vessels and other vessels traversing the Caribbean Sea”. The article does present the PPP/C’s argument that there are already incidental exports of fuel in the sales to international ships and planes at ports in Guyana, however, admittedly, a company dedicated to providing such services would be new to Guyana.
The article states that the Minister of (Public) Infrastructure, David Patterson said “in the first place that the company did not have an oil exploration licence”. There was/is no need for an oil exploration licence: no connection to a discovery and/or processing of petroleum in Guyana was required. Fuel would be purchased and stored for refuelling the vessels of clients.
Secondly, Minister Patterson is claimed to have said that “since the PPP/C never granted the fishing licence, we wrote seeking justification since fishing was their basis first time around”. No fishing licence was applied for or required: China Zhonghao Inc was not, nor needed to be fishing, itself. A third reason attributed to the present government for scrapping the licence is that, ‘they reportedly built a larger than authorized wharf’. This is a matter for MARAD to handle and could hardly be a basis for scrapping a fuel Import/ Export licence.
The Government would be doing itself ill if it were to stay silent on this article. It would give strength to the impression in the first paragraph of the article that the government is acting out of spite, giving all who worked with the PPP/C administration a hard time: that “Entrepreneurs who were said to be on safe grounds during the previous administration are now feeling the squeeze”. The Government needs to say this isn’t so, that the writers of the article were mistaken, if not the Government’s claim to good governance would be hollow.
Samuel A.A. Hinds
Former President, Former Prime Minister

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