Material Omission

Apr 27, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – What else is ExxonMobil hiding from Guyana? How much more is the company’s concealments costing the people of this country? Where else in the world could there be found a partner with the dubious quality of ExxonMobil? In what other country would stand a leader like Vice President Jagdeo insisting that he is representing Guyanese, but drawing closer and closer to this skilled street hustler of an American oil supergiant? If ExxonMobil could go to such lengths to hide from, probably pull a fast one on, Guyanese, for US$40M, then what else could have already happened with countless other millions, and what more could be in store that is going to cost Guyanese heavily.

We ask all Guyanese to takeoff their Ali and Jagdeo hat, and their Norton and Ramjattan hat, for a moment. US$40M in materials that cannot be properly accounted for by ExxonMobil must raise the concern that if for US$40M, then US$400M doesn’t look too daunting. An amount that should not be gone near to, even thought of, looks doable. It was ExxonMobil’s Guyana chief executive, Alistair Routledge, who spoke brightly of the company’s accounting systems, which drives the question about he may have been selling, or if he was inhaling something other than Guyana’s clean, pure air. Sloppy and conveniently so was the accounting for that US$40.4M in materials with no vendor details, bringing the auditors to a screeching halt. When an item of this magnitude cannot be traced because of a lack of mandatory details, then one must wonder if ExxonMobil paid itself that US$40.4M at Guyana’s expense and hoped for ignorance. In a submission of US$7.3B in expenses, there is considerable room to play the numbers game and keep fingers crossed. In other words, tens of millions here and other equivalent amounts (or greater) in different places, and the chances taken could result in a total payoff of a sweet billion or two. Even with the broadest scope and real probing, auditors could still miss big chunks of the suspicious and likely unscrupulous. Guyana’s loss is ExxonMobil’s gain.

This is the kind of audit development that Guyana’s chief policymaker stands guard over. Given the secrecy surrounding the US$214M audit report, Jagdeo looks like a leader whose chief policy is to protect ExxonMobil at all costs. There can be little trust and less regard for a leader that fashions all manner of smokescreens to throw citizens off balance. He is hoping against hope that Guyanese buy his fairy stories and look favourably on his stewardship and ExxonMobil’s shenanigans with this oil and expenses. The bad news for Jagdeo is that Guyanese see him all the way to his bones, which grow increasingly curved with each new ExxonMobil development. In some respects, it is dawning upon Guyanese (including PPP/C stalwarts) that tricks like these from Guyana’s American oil partner is why Jagdeo hasn’t given the strongest and most unambiguous order that the US$214M audit report be released immediately. All his characteristic pretensions about the “technical people” and ‘I don’t get involved in that’ give off a smell that reminds of rotten eggs. The more he runs interference for ExxonMobil, the more he himself smears some of those decayed eggs all over his face.

The challenge faced by Jagdeo should be a concern for Guyanese. Because he has wrapped himself in the arms of ExxonMobil, there is little that he can do to extricate himself now from the clutches of the Americans. Such are the fruits of leadership gone astray, oil management that is all for the benefit of those who has him in a vise. The PPP/C Government, from President Ali to Vice President Jagdeo to the invisible and irrelevant Minister Bharrat, has had ample opportunity to walk a straight line and drag partner Routledge along it. The opposite has happened: Routledge makes the oil and governance policies for Guyana, and the sitting government and its leaders are left with no choice but to go along with them. It is why Jagdeo concocted this charade about being the chief policymaker, when all he is reduced to doing now is to endorse what pleases ExxonMobil. Hiding audit and other reports from Guyanese is one such policy.

concealments, country, Editorial, ExxonMobil, Guyana

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