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OAI explains land lease for Exxon’s head office- but ignores what Guyana is getting
The land at Ogle which has been cleared and which has been sub-leased by OAI to ExxonMobil’s subsidiary.
The Ogle Airport Inc. (OAI) has come out to explain how it allocated 15 acres of land for the construction of a local headquarters for ExxonMobil. However, the company is ignoring the lowly lease it is paying government compared to what it sub-leased those 15 acres to ExxonMobil for.
Ogle airport, a privately-run facility, was a few years ago allowed to accommodate regional flights. In 2017, based on a memorandum of understanding (MoU), the airport agreed to lease 15 acres to ExxonMobil’s local subsidiary, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL).
According to the initial MoU, for 10 acres, the oil company would pay US$43,570 or US$4,357 per acre per year. However, according to Article 5 in the master lease, OAI was only paying the Government a mere US$6 per acre for what is prime property.
Following the report in Kaieteur News over the weekend, OAI’s spokesman, Kit Nascimento, yesterday said that the coverage was “absolute rubbish”.
“The fact that ExxonMobil are building their office headquarters at the EF Correia International Airport significantly adds to the prestige (sic) and reputation of the Airport’s operations and provides an important source of revenue for the airport’s operations and development,” he said in a letter to the newspaper.
He did not talk about the US$6 per acre that OAI was paying.
“It is absolute rubbish for your newspaper to report that an aircraft operator is being denied land in favour of Exxon. The Exxon headquarters are being built on non airside land leased commercially in accordance with the Airport’s Lease Agreement with the government for the Management and Development of the Airport, as distinct from airside land leased for aircraft operations, that is, land subject to restricted access for aircraft operations.”
He said there are no existing aircraft operator land use applications, which in any way compete with the ExxonMobil access to land for the construction of its office headquarters.
“Of the roughly 408 acres of land leased to Ogle Airport Inc. (OAI) for the development of an International Airport, in fact, only 38%, that is, some 150 acres, is suitable for actual development, 60 acres of which is dedicated to airside development.”
Nascimento said that the airport has recently written to all current and potential airside operators inviting qualified Expressions of Interest for airside property.
“On receipt of Expressions of Interest, interested operators will be required to complete a formal application to be processed in accordance with the Airport’s Land Use Policy and are treated on a “first come first serve basis” on the date of completion of the application, submission of designed plans and projected start-up construction date.”
He also said that the airport wishes to point out that prospective users of airside land must be able to meet internationally established standards and best practices demanded of operators on all international airports and which are compliant with the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).
The airport said it is proud of the fact that since its development over the past decade, it is already successfully serving the movement of just under 100,000 generally satisfied passengers per year, including over 40,000 international passengers, and moving roughly 17 million pounds of cargo to domestic and international destinations.
To meet the requirement by EEPGL for security to their land, the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission extended the OAI Master Lease to 2068, effective 1st January, 2018.
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