Govt.’s hiding of true oil reserve numbers a recipe for thievery - Opposition

Govt.’s hiding of true oil reserve numbers a recipe for thievery – Opposition

Aug 20, 2024 News

Kaieteur News – The People’s National Congress Reform PNC/R) is of the view that the Government of Guyana’s hiding of the true oil reserve numbers is a recipe for thievery. Economist and Spokesperson on oil and gas for the party Elson Low told this publication in an invited comment said that the current administration is treating the country’s oil as if it is its personal property.

Economist and spokesperson to the PNC on oil and gas Elson Low.

Low said, “The PPP is behaving as if it believes that Guyana’s oil is its personal property. It is clear that the government is deliberately hiding accurate oil reserve estimates because if only one new oil find announced by CNOOC is larger than the government’s entire announced reserve increase then the total increased reserve for multiple finds must be far higher.”

The party is of the belief that there should be criminal penalties in place “for deliberately concealing oil reserves and that there should be a transparent, specific, regular process for the release of reserve estimates. In the event that there is a legitimate reason to conceal them (such as national security concerns given the current controversy with Venezuela), these updated estimates should at minimum be communicated to the Opposition via the relevant National Assembly Committees.”

Furthermore the PNC believes that the government’s hiding of the true numbers of the oil reserves “is a recipe for kleptocracy because it would allow a government and company to collude to siphon off oil revenues. If Guyanese do not know exactly how much oil the country has and there is not adequate monitoring of daily production (as we have called for) then billions of barrels could go missing over time, with Guyanese unable to identify this. The PPP’s disdain for basic tenets of good governance, like transparency, is a danger to Guyana’s potential prosperity.”

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.

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. This glaring contradiction, which was done at a televised news conference will further undermine the government’s claim of being transparent in its dealing with citizens in the oil and gas sector.

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