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Tax chief to keep watchful eye on all costs submitted

Feb 01, 2020 News

Commissioner -General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Godfrey Statia has given all assurances that he and his team will be keeping a watchful eye on all costs submitted by ExxonMobil for its operations in the Stabroek Block.
The GRA boss gave this commitment at a press conference that was held yesterday afternoon at his Camp Street office, following an update from Kaieteur News that the American company revised its development cost for the Liza Phase One Project from US$4.4B to US3.5B.
He was asked to say if he found the billion-dollar shortfall to be suspicious. But the official answered in the negative. He said that in the oil industry, it is normal that there would be overestimations when companies are going into projects.
The official said, however, that audits of the development costs would be ongoing. Statia said too, that he and his team are relying on the expertise of IHS Markit Limited, a London-based firm, which is currently working alongside the GRA in the audit of the controversial US$900M pre-contract costs Guyana is expected to pay ExxonMobil. That audit, he said, will be completed in three months.
The Commissioner-General said, “What we have done is, we have mirrored the external auditing firm. If they have two petroleum engineers, then we have one there with them so that they can learn. Every skill they brought in, we have someone there so we can learn. We have also been doing our own training as well as training with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”
While noting that he is pleased that the costs are down since it means that less money would have to be recovered by the contractor, he insists that GRA will still do its rigorous audits to ensure the development costs are what ExxonMobil says they are.

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