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Guyana has a sly mongoose for an oil partner

Aug 29, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Most Guyanese are familiar with that popular song, which has this line as part of its lyrics: “Sly mongoose, your name gone abroad…” Well, though we have said it repeatedly, this is what Guyana has for its main oil partner – a big fat sly mongoose. And just in case any Guyanese is still wondering which body is the ‘sly mongoose’, they don’t have to think too hard: there is Exxon.
Exxon takes out the “big fat chickens” from Guyana’s oil wells, and Guyanese are still not certain that they know the whole story about how much oil the company produces, or the accuracy of the records it keeps. For certainty, we now have local presences from the Guyana National Bureau of Standards to monitor what is going on 125 miles from our shorelines at the wellheads. Still, many Guyanese do not trust Exxon and their coconspirators.
We do not have a clear idea from the billions in bills that Exxon has submitted as part of its recoverable costs, whether those costs are appropriate (fair and reasonable), or whether they are for Exxon’s oil operations in Guyana (not from some of its other oil operations in other places), or whether those billions in expenses submitted actually happened. In other words, we are still clueless regarding if Exxon is trying to pull a fast one, by hiding a whole lot of expenses that have neither relation to Guyana nor any truthfulness as to the quantity of its billions in expenses. To state this in a real down to earth manner, we could be at sea about whether Exxon is passing off somebody else’s baby on Guyanese, and telling them that this belongs to Guyana. Guyana is the father.
To harbour the belief that oil companies in general, and perhaps Exxon to be pointed, is capable of such skullduggeries is not farfetched at all. For this is what our above the fold headline from last Thursday spotlighted before all Guyanese: “US$100M unrelated oil expenses ends up in Mozambique’s oil books -Int’l watchdog urges Guyana to take note” (KN August 26). In this particular instance, the American-based Center for Public Integrity (CPI) pointed out that the corporate oil bandit and swindler was Sasol Limited, a South African company that gutted Mozambique to the tune of US$99.8M, and this was just last year. Mozambique’s auditors discovered that Sasol fixed it figures to commit a financial fraud on the people of that struggling oil-producing nation.
CPI also revealed that of 40 plus cases it examined in Indonesia, Alaska, and Ghana (among other places), “many of the expenses claimed by the oil companies were simply ineligible.” To put it frankly: oil companies were cheating and robbing those places blind. If this could have been attempted in Alaska of all places, then cheating Guyana with inflated or unrelated oil expenses is like shooting a big fat turkey trapped in a barrel. It is a can’t miss situation. And given the leaders that Guyana has, they have given oil companies operating here the weapons to destroy us, and invite them to carry away the bird and barrel too.
Look at the cozy relationship that both the coalition and current PPP Governments have had with oil companies, and Exxon standing as Guyana’s Public Oil Enemy Number 1, and this is what has been given free rein to occur here. What Exxon is actually doing out there on our seas is a mystery. What Guyana’s leading political oil figures are doing is a mystery. And Exxon’s billions in invoices delivered are a special mystery by themselves. The circumstances are custom made for oil companies to come here and conduct themselves in a manner that endlessly cheats us. They have.
We at this paper will not pull any punches: we must not let our guard down. Instead, it is essential that the opposite prevails at all times: we must be on constant alert. Exxon is an entity not to be trusted. It has dealt in purely the shady, and the company has made Guyana’s political leaders in one government after the other, a shady bunch to begin with, shadier still. We have no choice but to watch them all, meaning, company and political leaders.

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