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Exxon used Stabroek Block Profits to splurge on holiday gift vouchers for security guards, escorts for Execs and security for expats’ family fun day

Oct 25, 2023 ExxonMobil, News, Oil & Gas

Audit of US$7.3B Liza 1&2 Bills reveal…

Kaieteur News – The second audit into ExxonMobil Guyana Limited’s expenses show that the oil company used a portion of the Stabroek Block profits to splurge on holiday gift vouchers for its security personnel, cover escorts for its Executives around Georgetown and pay security personnel for a family fun day for its expatriates.

Auditors which included Ramdihal & Haynes Inc., Eclisar Financial, and Vitality Accounting & Consultancy Inc., with backing from Martindale Consultants, made the foregoing observation after examining over US$7B in expenses Exxon incurred during 2018 to 2020.

In the report seen by this newspaper, auditors said Exxon must return US$75,323 to the Stabroek Block account because it was used to cover security and other corporate expenses that are not allowed under the block’s Production Sharing Agreement (PSA).

Auditors referenced Annex C of the Stabroek Block PSA which states that all costs, expenses and expenditures must be related to petroleum operations if they are to be recovered. The auditing team was emphatic that security expenses and gift vouchers are corporate expenses. They therefore ordered that the sum of US$75,323 be returned to the Stabroek Block account. Kaieteur News understands that Exxon only reimbursed the account with US$ 2,398. Auditors maintained however that the full amount must be repaid.

It should be noted that this audit report on Exxon’s US$7.3B expenses incurred from 2018 to 2020 is yet to be released to the public. Neither the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) nor the Ministry of Natural Resources would respond to requests by this newspaper over the last month for this to be done.

Another critical point of note is that this audit did not entail a review of every bill related to the 2018 to 2020 period as it was not a forensic audit. In fact, leader of the local consortium involved in the audit, Floyd Haynes, confirmed this with Kaieteur News in a previous interview.

He had further explained that the audit would not examine every single cost incurred by Exxon. He said no audit is ever done that way. Haynes said auditors look at a sample of the costs incurred. He had said that sample is based on a number of things.

Kaieteur News had previously reported that the audit contract that was awarded to Haynes and his team back in 2022 for US$751,000 had a strict four-month deadline for completion. Notably, the US$7.3B costs which the auditors examined pertain to the investments for the Liza Phase One and Liza Phase Two Projects which are currently producing approximately 400,000 barrels of oil per day.

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