Govt. makes no headway in disclosing Omai, other mining contracts

Feb 12, 2021 News

Six months in office…

Kaieteur News – Implementing countries like Guyana, under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), are encouraged to publicly disclose any contracts and licences that provide the terms attached to the exploitation oil, gas minerals, which were entered into before 2021.
The EITI had also required Guyana to disclose the identities of the real owners—also known as beneficial owners—of the companies, which have obtained rights to extract oil, gas and minerals before the end of 2020.
But it has been seven months since the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) assumed role of government and the citizenry is yet to see any headway on the disclosure of contracts from the lucrative mining sector.
In fact, Guyana has only managed to make public those contracts from petroleum sector, while contracts for the bauxite, timber, gold and diamond sectors remain a secret. Visits to the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and the Ministry of Natural Resources (MoNR) websites even proved futile, since no mining contracts could be found on their web pages.
This Kaieteur News article comes on the heels of Omai Gold Mines Corporation announcing yesterday that the first phase of diamond core drilling at the Omai Project had commenced. In its announcement of this drilling exercise, Omai Gold Mines boasted of the “thickness of gold extending below the current pit, including 69 meters of 3.96 grams per tonne gold”, as it added that that drilling “is expected to accelerate a new mineral resource estimate planned in late 2021.”
But Omai is not the only mining company that is hitting the jackpot. In fact, in October 2020, Troy Resources had announced that it had discovered a four-ounce-to-the-tonne gold hit in its latest diamond drill hole at the Smarts Underground deposit at its operating, million-ounce, Karouni gold project in Guyana.
Troy Resources’ Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Ken Nilsson, had confirmed that this was the “best hole” that Troy had ever drilled and was the “best” he had ever seen.
While these may seem like promising news, Guyanese have no clue what benefits they will reap from these massive finds as the contracts signed between Omai Gold Mines, Troy Resources, other mining companies operating in Guyana remain shrouded in secrecy.

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