Latest update January 17th, 2025 6:30 AM
Trotman had no legal authority to give a new contract – Chris Ram
Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, had no legal authority to grant a new petroleum agreement to ExxonMobil in 2016, according to Attorney-at-Law and Accountant Christopher Ram.
Attorney-at-Law and Accountant, Christopher Ram
He (Ram) was able to get his hands on the bridging deed which seeks to renew the expired 1999 agreement granted to ExxonMobil by the then President Janet Jagan. The Government has kept the Deed hidden from the Guyanese people for four years, refusing to publish it, despite countless calls for its release.
In yesterday’s edition of his Stabroek News column ‘The road to first oil’, Ram noted a section of the Deed, which appears to state that the Deed is grounded in law. This, Ram refuted.
Kaieteur News has seen the Deed, which states “Pursuant to section 10 of the Act, the Minister has entered into this Deed together with the Contractor parties to set out the process whereby the 1999 License and the 1999 Petroleum Agreement will be replaced by a new petroleum prospecting license and petroleum agreement in respect of the Contract Area.”
While the Deed seeks to ground itself in section 10 of the Act governing the oil and gas sector, the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act, a perusal of that section shows there is no mention of a Deed. Ram explained this, writing that “[it] gives the Minister no power to enter into any Deed and certainly not one to breathe life into an expiring agreement”.
Ram noted that the section goes even further to state categorically that the Minister is granted the power to enter into an agreement “not inconsistent with the Act” i.e. the four specified matters, namely the granting of a license, the conditions attaching thereto, the procedure to be followed in exercising any discretion granted to him under the Act and any matter incidental thereto. The lawyer hopes Minister Trotman would explain how section 10 of the Act gives him the “supernatural” power to revive a “dead” agreement.
At the time of the signing of the Deed and the 2016 petroleum agreement, Trotman could have told ExxonMobil and its partners, CNOOC and Hess, that his authority was constrained by the law, Ram posited.
The Minister, according to Ram, had a golden opportunity to correct the wrong “inflicted” by the 1999 agreement, as the acreage granted to ExxonMobil is many times more than the law allows. Trotman did not.
The Petroleum Contract mentions the deed, for which, the purpose is to replace the 1999 Agreement and the 1999 Petroleum Prospecting Licence for the Stabroek Block. The first agreement was signed by the late Janet Jagan, in her capacity as Minister of Petroleum in 1999 and the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) currently in force was signed by Trotman in 2016.
Activist Ramon Gaskin had last year questioned the secrecy surrounding the bridging deed.
Ram had long condemned Minister Trotman for not immediately revealing the 2016 Stabroek license to the public, explaining that he had acted against Section 16(2) of the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act, which requires the Minister to publish notice of the agreement in The Official Gazette as soon as is practicable after the licence is granted. By failing to observe this aspect of the law, Ram had said that Trotman has set a worrying precedent.
Now, years after the release of that PSA, the Government has not itself taken the initiative to release the bridging deed, although some like Ram have managed to get their hands on it. Local commentators have said that, by not releasing the bridging deed, Trotman is still in contravention of the Petroleum Act.
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