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World Bank, Chatham House reps had called publishing oil contracts a bad idea – Former Presidential Advisor
By Kemol King
Kaieteur News – Former Presidential Advisor on Petroleum, Dr. Jan Mangal, said that representatives from Chatham House and the World Bank told him it was a bad idea to publish the contracts Guyana signed with international oil companies (IOCs) for the rights to operate their respective blocks. The comment is included in a public LinkedIn post by the good governance advocate.
Former Presidential Advisor on Petroleum, Dr. Jan Mangal
The World Bank is Guyana’s development partner of many years, and Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), is a policy institute which at times assists governments.
Dr. Mangal reported finding it quite surprising that representatives from these institutions would advise against transparency. He told Kaieteur News “I was taken aback by these comments from Chatham House and World Bank representatives, as I always imagined these organizations would be for transparency which is proven to help countries, and would not be advocating for secrecy which would have the opposite effect.”
At the time, he was advocating for the publication of the contracts, while working for former President, David Granger. Dr. Mangal shared extracts of his Terms of Reference to the administration, which included the recommendation “Release all executed O&G contracts to civil society, to help foster a culture of accountability and transparency.”
“It is my view,” Dr. Mangal said, “that natural resource companies benefit unfairly from secret contracts, and the resource owners, i.e. countries, lose huge value because of secret contracts. Getting the contracts into the public domain is only the first step, and now Guyanese and others need to work towards re-balancing these unfair contracts.”
The representatives he referred to had other ideas. He told Kaieteur News that though it was a while ago, he recalls that an excuse given, was that “releasing contracts will likely confuse the public, who are not knowledgeable about these contracts.”
This was in addition to excuses, Mangal said, from Ministers of the Granger administration. They were “interesting excuses as to why the contract with ExxonMobil for the Stabroek Block should not be released to the Guyanese people (the very people who owned the oil), and it was obvious to me why they were doing this. Very few countries succeeded in publishing their contracts as quickly as we did in Guyana, and this was particularly remarkable since the hugely unfair contract for the Stabroek Block was/is key to the future viability of companies such as ExxonMobil and Hess Corporation.”
After publication of the contracts, the Stabroek Block Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) especially received much public scrutiny and criticism as it governed the handling of a massive find. Public ire over the contract’s industry low fiscal terms for government’s share grew even more as more discoveries were made. Presently, ExxonMobil estimates that the block holds nine billion barrels of proven reserves.
The only major party which has shown interest in renegotiating the deal is A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) through Member of Parliament (MP), David Patterson. However, when Global Witness released its now withdrawn report criticizing the deal, the Granger administration in early 2020 defended the deal in a statement. Patterson has not explained why prior to the 2020 elections, the administration he formed part of, rejected public pressure to renegotiate the deal for years, but has now changed its tune.
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