Latest update January 17th, 2025 6:30 AM
Guyana earned US$2.5B from oil last year
Kaieteur News- Guyana’s Natural Resource Fund (NRF), the country’s oil account, received a total of US$2,505,193,036 for the year 2024.
According to a Government Notice, the funds received for the period October 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024 totaled US$605,193,037.
The fourth quarter receipt includes seven payments for profit oil, and a single royalty payment. It was reported that in the first quarter of 2024, the NRF was paid US$604M. This was followed by a US$778M payment in the second quarter and US$582.8M in the third quarter.
Recently, Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat revealed that a total of 225 million barrels of oil were produced for the year 2024. Notably, Guyana only received 28 lifts, or 28 million barrels of oil produced by ExxonMobil during the period.
Table showing receipts of petroleum revenues paid into the NRF during the fourth quarter of 2024.
Last year, the sum of US$1.5B in oil revenue was approved for withdrawal in the National Assembly, with widespread criticisms about the lack of transparency in government’s spending of revenue earned from the oil sector.
Section 16.2 of the NRF Act states that, “All withdrawals from the Fund shall be deposited into the Consolidated Fund and shall be used only to finance: (a) national development priorities including any initiative aimed at realizing an inclusive green economy, and (b) essential projects that are directly related to ameliorating the effect of a major natural disaster.”
Be that as it may, the government has not highlighted any national development priority or essential project funded through this source of income. In fact, major development priorities and essential projects such as roads, hospitals, and the new Demerara River Crossing are being funded through loan agreements. A loan to support the Gas-to-Energy project was also approved late last year.
In the mean time, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo who manages the Petroleum sector said showing how the revenue from oil is spent would be difficult.
He reasoned, “How do you balkanize revenue coming into the budget? (It) becomes a very difficult thing to do; so where the transparency is done, transparency is that every cent spent from oil money, from non-oil revenue and from borrowing, has to be appropriated by the National Assembly through a Budgetary Appropriation Process, whether it is the original Budget or through Supplementary Budgets which then form an appropriation act or a supplementary appropriation act, which itemizes all of the expenditure of the state and how much is going to be spent…”
(Guyana earned US$2.5B from oil last year)
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