Hess Corporation and taxes

Oct 12, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – Chartered accountant and attorney-at-law, Mr. Chis Ram, does the digging up.  I do the cremating.  The 170^th chapter of his oil series in Guyana, titled “The mystery of the receipts and certificates (SN, Oct 3,2025) calls Hess’s Standard Disclosure Filing 4, as “not only gibberish” but “false and deliberately so.”  It is a boracic mouthful from the usually placid and staid, Mr. Ram.  I think he started out on the wrong foot and ended up in a bad place.  One that made no sense for a man of his prowess.  His error was that he was looking for answers.  Like I told several people with whom I had conversations of Hess’s tax payment maneuvers, do what I learned to do quickly on Wall Street.  Don’t look for answers.  Look for the hammer that is about to fall.  Look for the trick that trips.  Don’t anticipate serious construction; brace self for the concoction that tries to pull wool over the eyes, while driving a spike into the behind.

What else is there to think, conclude, about: “A portion of gross production from the Stabroek Block, separate from the joint venture partners’ cost recovery and profit share entitlement, is used to satisfy the joint venture partners’ income tax liability.  Delivery of this production to the government in satisfaction of the joint venture partners’ income tax liability is administered by ExxonMobil Guyana Ltd. as the operator, and is therefore not included in this report as a payment.” (Italics mine).  Mr. Ram declared that to be “gibberish”.  I am kinder: balderdash, rubbish, and trash, it is.

First, it is a payment that is not a payment, not included as such, as Hess itself said.  Exxon, Hess and the Chinese do their own books.  Except that in this magical mystery monstrosity that is a tax payment tangle, Hess niftily separates itself and does a corporate shovel pass to Exxon.  Recall that the Hess family at one time owned the Super Bowl winning National Football League New York Jets team.  Hess Corp knows about laterals, shovel passes, dinks, and Hail Mary(s).  The lingo of the last sentence encircles all four actions.

Second, who is paying what to whom, but really isn’t?  How is that for trickiness, when all is said, done?  Third, out of where did that “portion of gross production from the Stabroek Block” come?  Since, the people said it is “separate from the joint venture partners’ cost recovery and profit share entitlements”, then my reasoning says that some of that deliberately hazy production is coming from Guyana’s pool and portion of oil.  To put differently, a part of Guyana’s own split of oil production is being pushed by Hess to Exxon to sell to the world as satisfaction of the partnership’s tax liability to this country.  I have reluctant admiration for creativity that is too clever by far.  In contrast, there is total distaste, complete scorn, for what I interpret to be the only label that could fit: a deep, dark game.

I think that what Hess Corp presented in that U.S. filing is better than anything that the skilled creators at the Office of the President can conjure.  Even a student of the language, as I fancy myself to me, am stroking my jaw.  No! I haven’t yet reached the stage of scratching my head, or pulling out any of the remaining hair from there.  It was one of the Hess principals who sold Guyana to the planets as a special kind of democracy.  It has to be, when the Hess Corp can dare to construct such an outrage, and still be allowed to walk in the times that enrich fair sons of liberty.  In which other country on this God’s green earth can someone attempt to pull a fast one like that fabrication, which purports to be income tax liability satisfaction, and is allowed to do more than get away with it?  That is, add insult to injury by turning around and mocking the people of a victimized nation with derisive laughter.

Mr. Ram was so apoplectic that he barely managed “gibberish.”  Not I, milords and ladies.  These are the developments that get the blood boiling, the synapses racing.  What Guyana is enduring relative to receipts and certificates, as such relate to oil taxes, is what Americans fondly call making someone into a horse’s ass.  With this business of tax receipts and certificates, it is not an individual ridiculed, but a whole damned country that is the picture of some Far Eastern despot’s demand for all comers to subject themselves to face down, full-length prostration.  Gibberish doesn’t quite fit.  Think of fiendish.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• GHK Lall, Hess Corporation, Stabroek Block, taxes

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