Cleverness with Guyanese oil money

Jun 21, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – First, disco sensation Donna Summer scorched the air with, “She works hard for the money….” Next, the O’Jays arrived with “For the love of money….”. Talk about money, the love of money, and there is ExxonMobil, and the schemers and tricksters who have creative hustles for it. From oil audit findings to oil audit reports to the paltry 2% royalty, it is the same dirty story. In each episode of ingenious corporate financial arrangements, ExxonMobil manipulates matters to add to its coffers at Guyana’s expense.

In the first ingenious financial revelation, audit findings of US$214M fell off a cliff: the drop was from US$214M to US$3M. ExxonMobil may have been cruel, but it can never be accused of being unkind. This is because Guyana still was to be left with US$3M and not zero. With the compliments of Vice President Jagdeo, that merry-go-round is still ongoing. He pretends at blissful ignorance (technical people), while ExxonMobil has its own people, along with the help of some Jagdeo-oriented Guyanese, that nudge and fudge those findings slowly forward to the arbitration that should have happened over a year ago. It is any Guyanese guess about where those US$214M audit findings could finalize once and for all. ExxonMobil wins anyway, regardless of the outcome. Its lawyers are paid from Guyana’s oil money, and they can hire accountants and auditors by the barge to come up with some spin and justification to reduce those findings to nothing. The loveliness in all this is that ExxonMobil’s lawyers bill, and Guyana’s oil dollars pay. Even if ExxonMobil loses at arbitration, it wins in the big money games.

The audit competed by the VHE Consulting group submitted a report of around 170 pages to the Government of Guyana. It involved US$7.3B of ExxonMobil’s expenses for the period 2018-2020. After much prodding from this publication, Guyana’s oil boss, the same Vice President Jagdeo, ensured that the world knew that the Guyana Government (his PPPC Government) released the report online. When questioned about if it was the whole report, Jagdeo went into his customary self-protective mode: it is “as received” and he hasn’t read it. We must congratulate Jagdeo on his safety conscious (himself) concerns and methods, as evidenced in his clever verbal maneuvers in the form of “as received.” It so happens that VHE audit sources confirmed that the whole report is not online, i.e., it is missing around 40 pages. It should be clearer now about why Jagdeo made sure that the world heard that he hadn’t seen it or read it. Most conspicuously, several areas with high-priced charges (rigs, helicopters, materials, and so on) are not present in the pages so generously shared by the PPPC Government with the Guyanese public. High-priced items represent hundreds of millions, possibly billions, in ExxonMobil’s expenses, which are now mysteriously missing (or conveniently made to disappear) from the US$7.3B audit report and its findings. Big money and big mysteries and there is this big superpower oil company, ExxonMobil, probably using some of its old tricks, to get the quiet collusion of the Guyana Government. Whatever must be done to squeeze another million from Guyana’s oil revenues will be done. This is now part of the shabby record of what Guyana’s oil partner, ExxonMobil (with its government partners) presents to Guyanese. It is unbelievable that the government that Guyanese put in office has come to this ugly state, where pages are being removed from audit reports, so that ExxonMobil can probably bilk Guyana of many more millions.

Last, there is the tiny royalty front, and even that measly 2% is not spared ExxonMobil’s claws. Professor C. Kenrick Hunte did the calculation and came up $225.25M short. ExxonMobil is shafting Guyanese still more, through slippery calculating, like some shyster pawnbroker. It is where 2% is not the full 2%, but 1.977%. It is the smallness of that sleight of hand of 0.023% that results in the hugeness of $225M less coming to Guyana under the disguise that it is full 2% in royalties. Audit findings, missing audit report pages, and less than 2% royalty emphasize to Guyanese how clever and greedy ExxonMobil is, and how new ways are concocted to cheat this country.

ExxonMobil’s, Guyanese, O’Jays, PPPC Government, Vice President Jagdeo

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Cleverness with Guyanese oil money

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