Canje Oil block award filled with red flags

Oct 11, 2020 News

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– Despite Guyana gets nothing from the US$ billions the oil block is worth, taxpayers owe G$100M pre-contracts costs to owners

Kaieteur News – This is the first of a series of articles exploring and exposing the circumstances surrounding the Canje and Kaieteur Blocks awards. Kaieteur News will be revealing the truth about the giveaways, which have deprived present and future Guyanese of their entitlement to the country’s oil wealth.

Estimated at a value in excess of US$100 billion, Guyana has gotten nothing from the giveaway of the Canje Block. Yet, taxpayers were handed a bill to the tune of G$100 million in pre-contract costs by the company, with no explanation of what pre-contract costs constitute.The Canje Block was awarded by the Donald Ramotar administration on March 4, 2015 days before the elections, to the local company, Mid Atlantic Oil & Gas, incorporated in 2013 by Hewley Nelson a management professional and Nicholas Chuck-A-Sang, a geologist. Nelson, who was listed as President of the company at the time, was also a Director.

He has since served on several public boards, including on the board of the Marriot Hotel’s parent company, Atlantic Hotel Incorporated, appointed to that post in 2017 by the David Granger administration. He is also understood to have dedicated many years of service the Hand-in-Hand Trust Corporation Inc., even serving as its General Manager. Nelson is also listed on the website of the Guyana Association of Securities Companies and Intermediaries Inc. as a member of the board of directors.
Kaieteur News sought to contact Nelson yesterday to ascertain certain details on the award, but he said that traffic in the area made it difficult for him to hear, and that he would return the call. He did not. Subsequent attempts to reach him proved futile.

Chuck-A-Sang, a petroleum engineer currently serves at the Department of Energy, and has a long history of service with the Government, dating back to the early 1990s. Kaieteur News reached out to Chuck-A-Sang by phone yesterday to enquire about his involvement with Mid-Atlantic. He was not employed by the Government at the time, he explained, since he had worked for the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) until 2005 as its Senior Petroleum Geologist. He related that he went into private consultancies during that period, and it was through that work that he came into contact with Mid-Atlantic. That company, he said, had asked for assistance setting up. He noted that he had worked with the company as a geologist, but could not remember precisely when he left. Chuck-A-Sang said he could not provide information regarding transfers of stakes in the Canje Block, nor of payments, as he was not involved in those matters.
The Canje Block agreement also includes the email address of another individual who is understood to be central in the company, Dr. Edris Kamal Dookie. Dookie was not listed as a director when Mid-Atlantic Oil & Gas was incorporated, but he is currently the sole shareholder. He joined Mid-Atlantic as a Director after the company was awarded the Canje Block.
Dookie is the only principal of Mid-Atlantic that has any prior experience in oil and gas. In 1996, he co-founded CGX with a Canadian named John Cullen. The company was granted the Corentyne Block in 1998. In 2000, the company’s rig was forced away from location by Surinamese gunboats while working to fulfill the company’s commitments under the agreement. Over the years, CGX has benefitted from a few more licensing concessions from the Government of Guyana.
In March 2013, it was reported that Dookie was no longer part of CGX, but it is unclear why he left, or whether he was fired. In that same month, an application was made for the Canje Block by Mid-Atlantic. The company was not yet incorporated when the application was made – with incorporation taking place one month later. Attempts were made to contact Dookie, as well, but they were unsuccessful.
Several important details about the Canje Block award have evaded public knowledge, despite the fact that international transparency best practices require that the man on the street be able to easily access them by picking up the phone or by a few clicks on the internet. The same is true for the circumstances, which followed the award, as the block changed hands.
The public plea for information from both the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) and A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) is made even more urgent by the fact that the award is wrought with red flags listed by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), an independent anti-corruption advocate, as potential signs of corruption.
More to come tomorrow…

 

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