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VP Jagdeo 99% sure no Govt. official has shares in Exxon
Kaieteur News – Vice President (VP) Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday insisted that he is 99% sure that no government official has shares in US oil Major ExxonMobil, which controls Guyana’s lucrative Stabroek Block.
Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo
Questions have swirled over whether government officials have shares in the US oil company and on Thursday Kaieteur News pointedly asked the Vice President to comment on this. “There are concerns in some sections of society that due to your government’s reluctance to renegotiate the ExxonMobil contract, cap interest rates, put independent meters at the pump, implement ring-fencing provisions, and demand full oil spill protection, that yourself as well as some members of the government might have a financial interest or own shares in ExxonMobil. How do you respond to that?” was the questioned asked to the VP. In his response, he said that: “I can almost say to you that I am 99% sure, nobody in this government owns any share. But if they do, (then) they have to declare it to the Integrity Commission. If they didn’t, then they can go to jail because that’s what it says, they’ll be falsifying the information.”
He stressed that he does not own any shares in Exxon or any other oil company and he does “not think that any minister in this government or the president owns any shares. We believe in the rule of law, (so) those will have to be declared to the Integrity Commission.”
Jagdeo said that he knows for sure that, “the President doesn’t own any shares, Mark Phillips doesn’t own any shares, I don’t own any shares, Vickram Bharrat doesn’t own any shares, Ashni Singh doesn’t own any shares.” He asked Kwame MCcoy if he had any shares, to which he responded in the negative.
Going back to when the opposition was in government, he highlighted that, “the APNU had a three-year gap during which they did not declare their income and assets. So, the question you may want to pose now that I have given you the answer that no I don’t have any pecuniary interest not just shares, you may want to ask now did any minister or any member or general secretary of a particular political party have any pecuniary interest in Exxon when the agreement was negotiated?
Did they own any share and whether those shares were not declared to the Integrity Commission but sold off before the APNU started declaring their statements of income and assets in the first three years?”
Claiming that he does not know much about the matter, the VP said from what he gathered, he knows that a lot of “flipping” took place in the three years when the political opposition did not have to set a baseline, to the period when they had to start declaring their income the first three years.
The government has come under constant scrutiny from the public on why issues such as renegotiation of the lopsided Exxon contract and ring-fencing are not being addressed.
Back in October 15th 2023, Jagdeo when asked about the lack of ring-fencing provision in the oil contract with ExxonMobil had said: “We admitted that we are foregoing revenue now in exchange for massive future income because it’s going into new projects that will increase production and so even with the same share of the 50/50 plus the two percent royalty that the future income, because of the bigger scale will be massive in Guyana’s case and we are deliberately foregoing that in this period for that purpose and then trying to grab this bone now could cause you to lose all the bones, the bigger bones too in the future.”
While Jagdeo fears Guyana not being able to gain revenue in the future from the sector due to a ring-fencing provision, experts in the industry have urged the nation to include such a provision to ensure it enjoys early returns from the sector. In three separate reports dated 2017, 2019 and 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated: “This asymmetrical treatment of profit and cost oil will benefit the contractor at the expense of delaying government revenue.” However, while in opposition, the very same VP had accused the then government of “selling Guyana out” to foreign oil companies by failing to ring-fence the Stabroek Block projects.
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