H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – First Reflections on 2023

Jan 07, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Rumours and reports that I have retreated, re-migrated (northward), or been recalled by the CIA are all grossly exaggerated.  How can I disappoint all those in party circles who scour the papers for a sighting. Well, here I am, my fellow Guyanese.  Best to all for 2024, and I mean all.  Now to business.

In the old days, the slower and denser in the classroom were usually mocked, laughed at, taken advantage of, slapped around, pushed about, and made fools of in many different ways.  It was a hard and unsparing environment in which those who were called ‘dunces’ lived.  Most Guyanese are familiar with this, which prevails to this day, but in a more modified form.  I look at what Exxon is doing to Guyana with its oil patrimony, and I detect a lot of this at work by those who are supposed to be our partners.  Some partner Exxon is.  Exxon pimps the patrimony of Guyanese out, and in the manner of street pimps, keep all the collections for itself.

There is this matter of a Farm out Agreement with Shell, but there is no money recorded in the books of Exxon (Esso Guyana).  Where are those millions, Mr. Routledge?  What went wrong with the vaunted accounting systems of Exxon of which so much was talked about its integrity?  Exxon executed one agreement with Shell in 2009, and a second in 2012.  Yet, on both occasions, the books of Exxon are blank, utterly devoid of any entry about money.  Did Exxon’s hallowed accounting books experience a ‘systems’ glitch’ on both occasions?  Mr. Routledge knows more than all Guyanese combined that oil is not a charity business, yet the entry in Exxon’s Guyana accounts is more in spirit form than anything tangible, such as a number.  I am sorry, Mr. Routledge, but this looks like ‘jumbie’ accounting to me.

Then I take the Exxon-Shell episodes and layer on those the US$92 million gap in precontract costs for 1999-2015 in the company’s records (charging Guyana US$460 million but entering US$368 million in its own records).  Once again, Exxon’s books reflect what gouges Guyana with precontract costs, and shortchanges this country with the Shell subletting arrangements.  Rather conspicuously, Mr. Alistair “good faith” Routledge has been bizarrely silent.  In the Shell schemes, so also are Mr. John “democracy” Hess of Hess Corp, and our dear and valuable Chinese friends, CNOOC.  Guyana is being taken for a schmuck and made into a snook.  Like the students that are slower and languish behind, Guyana is seen as a complete dunce in the oil business, which is justification for taking advantage of it.

I assert justification because when Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo is not up in arms over these accounting shenanigans of Exxon, then he gives the company what it interprets as a free hand to engage Ministry of Natural Resources personnel, with all manner of tomfoolery occurring with that US$214 million IHS Markit auditing findings report.  When Dr. Jagdeo plays his games with his fawners, props, and worshippers to attack conscientious objectors (like me) to disguise his glaring failures in keeping Exxon on a short leash, then he serves the company’s twisted interests.  What could be more economically subversive than that, friar Bharrat?  More and more supporters are seeing through the smokescreens and tricks, and how Exxon benefits, while Guyanese are battered by cost-of-living.  Former President Jagdeo should count his pluses, given that I have no interest in forming a political party, or being part of one.

Further, as the accounting acrobatics of Exxon come to light, one has to wonder what else the company has hidden, but of which Guyanese are in the dark.  It now makes sense for Exxon and VP Jagdeo to be so dogged that billions in offshore expenses are kept secret.  For there could probably be multiples of the US$92 million and Shell slickness that are embedded.  We would not be talking in the millions anymore, but billions of Yankee dollars.  Employing the 20 percent level that Exxon seems to be so enamored with when its skullduggeries surface, there could be at least US$10 billion in cheating and tricking and shaking down of this company by its own partner, with US$50 billion in debt.

I confess to being at a total loss when Guyanese step forward and try to defend what Exxon is doing, when such accounting obscenities hang over the company’s head.  If that is not the depths of depravity and treachery, then nothing else could ever qualify.  I mean that is insidiousness coming out of the pores.  Who are the Guyanese that could possess such a slavish mindset, accept Exxon’s sweet baits, to sell their own out?  What money, what favor, what consideration could ever have any appeal and value under such circumstances?

It is my belief that Guyanese are only now beginning to get a peek into Exxon’s extensive playbook as it pimps this country out, and then get local politicians and crass pundits to coverup its dirty tricks.  A number of us has laid out to VP Jagdeo that he needs to get some cojones and confront Exxon, instead of vilifying Guyanese who point to how damaging this oil partner has been to this country.  As should be obvious by now, Exxon cannot be trusted, and is bad for this country’s future.  VP Jagdeo can keep going down the failed road that he has chosen and run interference for Exxon.  But, he is walking on thin ice with the electorate, and he knows it, which is why he lashes out.  Lashing out only draws more of the wrong kind of conclusions about him.  Not from me, but his own people.  By the way, I recommend that all reading of newspapers, radio listening, and TV viewing cease for a month.  I did.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• CIA, Exxon, GHK Lall, Guyana, H@rd Truths

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