New structure being looked at for GEA – VP Jagdeo

Mar 26, 2021 News

Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo.

Kaieteur News – Casting blame on the David Granger led administration for its failure to implement prudent policies for Guyana’s oil sector, Vice President (VP), Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, announced that plans are in the works to devise a new structure for the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA).

The VP made those comments and more on a recent oil and gas virtual discussion on Globespan 24×7.
There, the VP stated, “Every day there are mundane issues, real-time issues that you have to address, which takes a lot of the technical staff’s time because if they don’t fix the permit now, we lose investments, et cetera, people lose money, et cetera. So, it’s a big struggle between the two and the only way we resolve that is by building the capacity.”

Already, Government has commenced the process along this line, seeking to build human capacity for the agency.

Guyana Energy Agency

“So, even now, we’re working on the new structure for the Energy Agency that will manage the sector. We will have to recruit people in aggressively from next week, hopefully you’ll start seeing maybe six ads in the newspapers, so we can start managing the sector better,” he said.

Further, the VP added that the new policies will empower the Government by ensuring that it can hold oil companies accountable for the sums spent here, to avoid Guyana paying exorbitant cost recovery fees.

The Agency’s mandate is stated in the provisions of the Guyana Energy Agency Act 1997, Guyana Energy Agency (Amendment) Act 2004, Guyana Energy Agency (Amendment) Act 2005 and the Petroleum and Petroleum Products Regulations 2004.

Developing a national energy policy and securing its implementation, carrying out research into all sources of energy including those sources presently used in Guyana for the generation of energy, and securing more efficient utilization of energy and sources of energy, monitoring the performance of the energy sector in Guyana, including the production, importation, distribution and utilization of petroleum and petroleum products are amongst those core functions listed.