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Jagdeo dodging giveaway of Kaieteur and Canje oil blocks – Nigel Hughes
Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo
Kaieteur News – Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), and prominent Attorney-at-Law, Nigel Hughes has called out Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo for failing to address the suspicious giveaway of two of the country’s largest oil blocks, the Kaieteur and Canje, by the PPP/C government led then by President Donald Ramotar.
The Canje Block was awarded by the Ramotar’s administration on March 4, 2015, days before that year’s General and Regional Elections, to a local company, Mid-Atlantic Oil and Gas. Similarly, the Kaieteur Block was awarded on April 28, 2015, just two weeks before the elections, and like the Canje Block, it was done based on the advice of former Minister of Natural Resources, Robert Persaud, Ramotar had said.
At the AFC’s press conference two weeks ago, Hughes while responding to Jagdeo’s invitation to address corruption during the APNU/AFC’s tenure in government between 2015 and 2020, said, it would be of greater significance if the past President could explain the giveaway of the oil blocks. The Vice President however completely glossed over this issue at his most recent media engagement. Jagdeo however addressed comments made by the AFC Leader on cybercrime and even the use of contractors for government projects.
Leader of the AFC Nigel Hughes
In an invited comment, Hughes told this newspaper that the citizens of Guyana are entitled to a response explaining the giveaway of the two oil blocks. He hinted that the politician was deliberately dodging the issue. The Lawyer however made it clear, “It’s the State’s assets, not the government in office during an election period. Jagdeo has a casual and tentative relationship with the truth and responsibility; as a consequence, the disclosure of how the corn is being shared is never disclosed.”
The award of the oil blocks to the companies was especially concerning since the ultra-deep drilling is required for those blocks, a technique which only a handful of companies in the world have the technology, track record, and capability to execute. The red flags which have manifested in both situations include that the awards were given to unqualified companies, that the initial owners quickly flipped the blocks without doing any work, that they are incorporated in ‘secrecy’ jurisdictions, and that Guyana likely lost revenue due to the avoidance of an open, competitive bidding process.
As such, Hughes previously said, “As Mr. Jagdeo has invited us to address the issue of corruption, he perhaps would like to tell us why within the last month before the 2015 elections two oil blocks, during an election campaign period, where the government activity is supposed to be reduced to running the basics, why two oil blocks- the Canje and Kaieteur Blocks were actually allocated.”
The Leader of the Alliance For Change was adamant that leaders must be willing to engage on such issues lest the country emerges as a ‘Banana Republic’ or a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. “We must be willing to discuss corruption because the track record that we have got as a country suggests that with the wealth that we have, all that we are going to do is become a rich Banana Republic. We are not going to achieve anything other than that. We will become a rich Banana Republic with lots of roads, lots of hotels (and) most of the citizens can’t even afford to survive because of the cost-of-living and we have these vacuous discussions about corruption that are not based on any sort of data,” he argued.
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