Monthly oil revenues

Jul 07, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – US$1.5B is real money, and when that is Guyana’s oil revenues per month, then it has a special sparkle. US$1.5B a month in oil revenues from Guyana’s three fully operational oil projects is GY$300billion a month and most Guyanese are asking themselves where that kind of money is going. They also ask how so little, mostly none; of it is coming their way. Whether the more manageable US$1.5B or the mindboggling mouthful that is GY$300B a month, it is what confirms where Guyana as an oil producing nation is, and for that there is joy. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the obscenity that confirms the meager slice of that monthly amount that flows to Guyana, and the horrible state in which that leaves droves of Guyanese.

The monthly revenue is pre-expense deductions aka cost recovery. Just like that 75% vanishes, and few Guyanese know for what, and how much of such has some connection to this country’s oil operations. When cost recovery from the top of revenues stands at 75%, then US$1.125B is gone with the wind, before any local could count from one to three. The US$375M (GY$75B) that remains is still a considerable sum for a poor country like Guyana, and some issues are not going away. What is happening with the GY$37.5B, Guyana’s half share, earned monthly? Also, why is the PPPC Government not taking a single step to remedy what must be among the most, if not the most, one-sided contract relationship in existence? Why is it not doing so, when this was what was promised by the same PPPC when it was in the ranks of the political Opposition, when its erstwhile leaders, none more than Bharrat Jagdeo, championed jumping all over the 2016 ExxonMobil oil contract, and changing it?

We know that Guyana’s share of its oil income is being deposited into the Natural Resources Fund (NRF) held at a bank in New York. After that, the PPPC Government has been studious in informing citizens when and how much it has withdrawn from the NRF. Thereafter, the mystery begins, and it is how the precious oil money of the people is being spent. It is already little to begin with, and for there to be suspense and what many Guyanese believe to reek of the suspicious and the sinister, simply made an unacceptable set of circumstances bitter and indigestible. These are the kinds of practices that tear societies apart. Iraq stands as one alarming example, with other ones dotted through parts of Africa and around this Latin American region.

Something else has been hammered into the heads of Guyanese so often that they have no feeling left. They are the richest people in the world. The calculations of the experts do not lie, nor are they intended to tease, for they are true. This means that the richest people in the world either are the unluckiest in the world, or they are the most reckless. To explain, they are the most reckless in that they are the most unconcerned about the disposition of their oil profits. They remain passive and contented when they get only a drip here and a tinier drop on those other occasions when a compassionate spirit stirs their government’s decision-makers. The unluckiest is likely closer to the true state of Guyanese because they have a government, and they have leaders who are the biggest, dumbest cats to be found anywhere. The people from ExxonMobil speak and all that the leaders in the PPPC Government and the extended opposition are willing to do is nod their heads in abject surrender.

ExxonMobil’s Vice President and Business Services Manager, Phillip Rietema, was the one who regurgitated what’s in black and white. “At current prices, which you can see reflected in our financial report, the revenue generated is over US$1.5B a month currently.” We should be fighting for more, but energies are wasted keeping each other down. Guyanese should see ExxonMobil for what it is, and it is not a true, trusted partner. Not with this much revenue monthly, not with expense billions a secret, and not with Guyana’s paltry share that locks most Guyanese in an impoverished state.

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Editorial, Guyana, Month, operations, revenues

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