ExxonMobil and successive Guyana Govts.

Oct 04, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Successive Governments of Guyana have joined in unholy conspiracies with ExxonMobil to drain and devastate the nation’s oil patrimony. It would have been bad enough if only the Guyanese people living today were negatively impacted. Sadly, it is more than the citizens of today, for those of future generations will also lose out on their rich patrimony, given the handiwork of one government after another.

From the time that Guyana’s oil discoveries mushroomed into the talk of the world, successive governments of the day have partnered and conspired with ExxonMobil at the expense of Guyanese. Guyanese Attorney-at-Law and Chartered Accountant, Christopher Ram, has termed what has happened as one uninterrupted ‘spineless conspiracy’ about, which neither the APNU+AFC Coalition Government nor the current PPP/C Government should be spared, but flayed.

Under the Coalition, a Guyana team went to Texas, and its members were manhandled and set straight about the only subject up for discussion. It was discussing and agreeing about what should go into the new oil contract, which ExxonMobil had to get at the cheapest cost, and in the quickest time. When the Guyanese head of the team to ExxonMobil headquarters in Texas, Newell Denison, reported back to the Government of Guyana (Minister of Natural Resources Trotman), about the less than hospitable treatment received from ExxonMobil’s people, he encountered a wall of indifference. Nothing came out of what should have been a clear warning to the Coalition Government that ExxonMobil was all about its own interests. Along the same lines, details about a US$18 million signing bonus were kept away from Guyanese, and the same was done with an independent investigation conducted by Clyde and Co. of the United Kingdom relative to the circumstances surrounding the signing of the 2016 agreement between Guyana and ExxonMobil. To publish the Clyde & Co. report in its entirety would expose ExxonMobil’s in the unkindest light before the world, as such relates to its part in the 2016 oil contract. It has no saving grace, and is an obscene piece of corporate cleverness and trickiness.

The question is no longer who is protecting whom since that is obvious. It is why did the Coalition APNU+AFC consent to be such a helpful partner in this conspiracy with ExxonMobil to keep Guyanese ignorant about the handling of their patrimony. When the succeeding PPP/C Government returned to office in 2020, the same political culture of conspiracy with ExxonMobil continued. After a grueling, acrimonious, and bitter elections season, the winning PPP/C Government had every reason in the world to publish the Clyde & Co. report, but made no move to do so.

When the PPP/C Government has had opportunity to conduct an inquiry into all that went into the signing of the 2016 oil contract, it has conspicuously manifested no such interest. After railing about how much of a crime the 2016 oil contract has been, the PPP/C Government then quietly did nothing that would disturb the peace of ExxonMobil and left it alone. Clearly what is at work here is that the political parties are protecting each other, and both have bent over backwards to protect ExxonMobil, and its Guyana secrets.

Presently, the PPP/C Government and its leadership have made complete embarrassments of themselves with the expensive humiliation that is the US$214 million audit findings, and all the conspiracies around what should have been an open and shut matter. Once again, Guyanese are left openmouthed on how their governments do very little for them, but bend over backwards to do everything possible for ExxonMobil.

This oil that should have been a great moment for Guyanese, an era of good feelings and grand hopes, has turned out to be the opposite. It has been about what drags down and damages, what has shattered the aspirations of this country’s sons and daughters. The PPP/C Government got the ball rolling in 1999, commenced what would become a trademark of successive governments: working with ExxonMobil to deceive Guyanese on the disposition of their wealth, and then to deny them knowing what was really going on with their patrimony. What is present between successive Guyana Governments and ExxonMobil are more than conspiracies. They are nothing but crimes of a particularly heinous kind.

Attorney-at-Law, Chartered Accountant, Christopher Ram, Editorial, Guyana

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