AFC believes Guyana's oil reserves significantly more than 11.6B barrels

AFC believes Guyana’s oil reserves significantly more than 11.6B barrels

Aug 18, 2024 News

Former AFC leader, Khemraj Ramjattan

…Challenges Govt. to make quarterly report public

Kaieteur News – The Alliance for Change (AFC) on Friday said that it believes the country’s oil reserves are significantly more than the 11.6B barrels that the government claims.

At the party weekly press conference, former leader of the party Khemraj Ramjattan said, “in view of all that is happening right now I distrust whatever the government is saying as to what our reserves are. I believe that it is lots more than 11.6B and the government simply doesn’t want us by virtue of this precedent that they are talking about 2014 to call Exxon for us to question Exxon how much more oil they have discovered, because there were obviously about 16 discoveries or so after that big one in Payara in the Stabroek Block.”

Ramjattan’s utterance was bolstered and supported by former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Dr. Vincent Adams who

challenged the government to release the quarterly report presented by ExxonMobil so that the public can examine it for themselves.

Ramjattan emphasized the need for citizens to “get these facts from the horse’s mouth, rather than through messages being sent, (saying) it is not more than 11.6 and so on. We can question them on the various finds they made since then and obviously these are major finds too. So it is obviously far higher than 11.6.”

Former Head of the EPA Dr Vincent Adams

Meanwhile, Dr Adams spoke of the lack of transparency related to the oil sector. He said, “Of course I don’t think it needs a whole lot of convincing from anybody of the non-transparency of this government and you cannot trust anything that they tell you. You know calculating reserves when we say this over and over does not take years. How come when they were doing reserves for the first year or two as soon as they would have discovered, we were getting an update with reserves which is how it normally happens.”

He continued: “Yes it is giving a different number even if they are not talking about the billion or the million. They are saying it has only increased by 600M and (CNOOC) is saying I think they made some statement saying seven hundred and something million,” he added.

The former EPA head called on NAtural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat to “show us the quarterly report that Exxon sends to them.”

He also challenged the government to release the raw data. Dr. Adam’s said his party has competent persons to calculate the data.

“It is very easy to calculate as long as you have the data in front of you. It doesn’t take you two years. if they want to be fully transparent we are challenging them to give us the raw data. The data does not belong to Exxon. The data belongs to the Government of Guyana,” he said.

Dr. Adams posited that there should be nothing proprietary in the reports provided by the oil company.

“There shouldn’t be anything that is proprietary in it, if there is then you can block it out. Show us the quarterly reports and show us the raw data and let us see for ourselves. So that’s the challenge,” he added.
In its 2023 annual report that was released this year, ExxonMobil’s partner, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) said that one of the eight new discoveries, Lancetfish, which was discovered in April 2023, averaged 100 million tons, translating to an estimated 746 million barrels of oil.

However, the Guyana Government on Wednesday claimed that since the last update in 2022, the reserves have only grown by 600M barrels.

The AFC said that the glaring contradiction will further undermine the government’s claim of being transparent in its dealing with citizens in matters related to the oil and gas sector.

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AFC, calculations, Data, Exxon, reserves

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