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Tullow – anybody can come here and do anything

Sep 02, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Who is really running this country?  Who makes the crucial decisions around here?  Do those decisions have weight with people outside of Guyana, or are they ignored and dismissed?  Or is the relationship between Guyana’s power structure at the top tiers and foreign operators so intimate, so incestuous, that the latter take things for granted, and do as they wish?  Is what they are finalizing for executing that which involves their best interests only, and with no regard for Guyana and lacking in any respect for its leaders?  What is the problem with acting unilaterally among friends?

These are some of the pointed questions that arise in the instance of what the British company, Tullow Oil, recently completed relative to plans for selling the majority of its shares in the Orinduik oil block.  What Tullow was granted is a licence, a lease to operate offshore Guyana and explore for oil.  In simple language, a licensee by any interpretation can be equated to a leaseholder or tenant.  A tenant has certain rights and obligations, but a tenant is not an owner.  Since a licensee is not an owner, by any definition, then it does not have any right to sell, even contemplate doing so, without the appropriate communications to the right people in Guyana.

The Government of Guyana has to be informed on a timely basis, must be fully in the loop, and must be the authority to give the green light for any sale plans of any kind, as such relate to oil blocks, any one of them.  The leaders in the Guyana Government are due this regard, and it is more than a passing courtesy, but is mandatory.  Thus, for Guyana’s Minister of Petroleum, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo to be put in the uncomfortable position (by Tullow) where something about the pending sale was heard, but that there has been no formal notification (from Tullow) is taking the insulting to a new level.

The first people who should have heard of this proposed sale outside of Tullow’s highest inner circle had to be those in the PPP/C Government.  This means Guyana’s most senior point man on all things oil, would be Vice President Jagdeo.

The Vice President should not be put on the back foot, nor should he be left groping for an answer through the haze that still surrounds this developing sale.  This publication has no interest in what Tullow has to say in its corporate release and well-tuned verbiage about its plans.  We don’t know, nor want to know, nor need to know.  What we do know is that this environment where every Tom, Dick, and Harry could come here to exploit our rich opportunities in the oil sector cannot, should not, and must not be allowed to continue, as it pleases outsiders.  These oil blocks are the property of the Guyanese people, and not that of the people who arrive here and say how constructive they will be as partners.

For any company, foreign or local, to give itself, or any Chief Executive Officer to give himself, the freedom to buy and sell at will what has been awarded to them on a discretionary basis raises hackles.  Guyana should never be made available, be up for grabs, for these kinds of barters, which possibly flowed, or was misinterpreted, from the mutually rewarding relationships between local political powers and foreign captains of commerce.  To think that Tullow could have these plans to sell its majority interest in this country’s Orinduik oil block, and the Guyana Government being in the dark raises hackles, generates anger.

What is surprising is that Vice President Jagdeo, a normally volatile presence when tough oil issues surface, is taking this Tullow sale plan development so quietly, almost so casually.  From Mr. Jagdeo’s demeanour, it is as if Guyana is dependent on the sweet courtesy of the senior people at Tullow, and when they are good and ready to share their plans.  Once again, Guyanese have a ringside seat to the two faces of Bharrat Jagdeo: the harsh, impatient face that he puts on for locals; and the smiling, and studiously servile, countenance that he keeps in special reserve for foreign entities, like Tullow.

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