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Guyana’s oil could be leaving by boatloads as Exxon given free pass to use as much as it needs for operations – Glenn Lall
Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil Guyana, the operator of Guyana’s oil rich Stabroek Block has been given a free pass to take as much of the country’s oil as it needs for its offshore operations, a move that could pave the way for boatloads of undocumented crude oil to be shipped away, according to Publisher of Kaieteur News, Glenn Lall.
Kaieteur News Publisher, Glenn Lall
The businessman and anti-corruption advocate, in a public message on his social media platforms, pointed to an article published by Kaieteur News on Monday under the headline ‘Guyana in the dark on how much oil is being deducted by Exxon for its operations – Int’l lawyer says matter is of serious concern.’
He pointed out that the oil giant, as per the terms of the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), is allowed to use a reasonable amount of oil for its daily operations; however, there is no record of how much of this production is being used by the company.
Article 11.9 of the Agreement states: “The Contractor shall have the right to use in any Petroleum Operations as much of the production as may reasonably be required by it therefore and the quantities so used or lost shall be excluded from any calculations of Cost Oil and/or Cost Gas and Profit Oil and/or Profit Gas entitlement.”
Lall was keen to note that this state of affairs has been ongoing since oil production commenced in 2019. International Lawyer, Melinda Janki wrote to President Irfaan Ali in 2021 seeking answers on the quantity of oil being used by the company but never received a response.
The newspaper Publisher argued that all other oil production related data has been made public by the government including how much gas was flared, used for fuel and re-injected, along with the quantity of produced water. To this end, he said, “When it comes to awe sweet crude oil, there is no explanation, beat that, five years now.”
President, ExxonMobil Guyana Limited, Alistair Routledge
In attempting to simplify the gravity of the situation for his viewers, he explained, “It’s like men picking your coconuts, and they can use a “reasonable” amount for themselves, but you have no meter, sorry, no one to check how much they’re taking every month. Yuh know what will happen? Boatloads will be leaving your farm secretly every day, while you sleeping in yuh bed.”
The advocate pointed out that five years after the country commenced oil production activities, the country is yet to procure its own meters to verify the daily rate of oil production being reported to the government. Furthermore, Lall said this has caused further alarm since Exxon has bluntly refused to allow auditors access to its raw production data.
It was reported that during the audit of Exxon’s 2018 and 2020 expenses, the company refused to provide a map of the metering points on the Liza Destiny, the country’s first Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel.
The auditors said the schematic would provide a visual representation of the physical flow of production as it is produced onto the FPSO, through the various types of production equipment, and into the storage tanks.
ExxonMobil also bluntly refused to provide the raw production data to the audit team.
To this end, the businessman reasoned, “Government is getting data that Exxon presents to them as raw data, hence they refused to give the auditors access to check the raw data on the production data at the pumps. To eliminate this issue is simple, put our own meters on each of the FPSOs, this way auditors would not have to beg Exxon to see the raw data, we would have this at our fingertips.”
With government uninterested in implementing independent meters, Lall said the situation becomes sadder as the political Opposition seems to be in a deep slumber, failing to nip these issues in the bud.
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