Genuine concern for Guyana’s future could have prevented this omission

Jun 19, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

In a letter to the Editor 15th May 2017, I expressed serious concerns following (then) Minister of Natural Resources Hon. Raphael Trotman’s statement on the Production Sharing Agreement with ExxonMobil, “ExxonMobil is allowed to recover expenditure as part of the contract, this is easily understood. What is not clear is exactly what expenditure. Is it the expenditure to the point of discovery? Do we have a figure of how much it cost ExxonMobil to discover the Liza field well and is that the amount to be recovered by ExxonMobil or is it that we will have to repay all of ExxonMobil’s subsequent costs as they continue to explore?” (https://www.stabroeknews.com/2017/opinion/letters/05/15/expenditure-exactly-will-exxonmobil-recovering/)
That was over two years ago, answers were never provided, for no doubt they were dismissed as ‘non-expert’, sadly the government is now asking the International Monetary Fund the same questions; the Concluding Statement of the 2019 International Monetary Fund (IMF) Article IV Mission to Guyana states, “authorities have indicated their concerns that the absence of a ring-fencing arrangement in the Stabroek Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) could potentially affect the projected flow of government oil revenues.”
The harsh truth is that this omission from the PSA could not be made if the persons negotiating on the behalf of the Guyanese people applied logic, commonsense, if you will and genuine concern for the future well being that oil revenues could provide. The Advisor on Petroleum to the President, Jan Mangal, now claims to have been absent from negotiations. No special knowledge of ‘oil and gas’ was required, just honest care. We may never know if the negotiations were so poorly done due to negligence, corruption, deficient logic or basic stupidity; what I do know, is that no administration that cares so little for the future well being of its people, should ever be elected again. The Guyanese people are not incapable of logical thought and we know the clichéd ‘fool me once’ applies in spades.

Respectfully,
Robin Singh

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