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Routledge v. OGGN – who’s right
(Kaieteur News) – We get the impression that ExxonMobil Guyana President, Alistair Routledge, and Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali use especially skilled scriptwriters. They both say what sounds plentiful, but when parsed through closely, what have they really said is what leaves many scratching their heads.
On Monday, October 13th, Routledge held one of his rare press engagements. A question that Mr. Routledge had to anticipate was coming isolated the issue of tax receipts issued to the company by the Guyana Government. It could be said that he did not disappoint, while it could also be said that he didn’t shed much light on these tax receipts.
A receipt is a receipt, regardless of who creates it, and no one should have and problems or objections in producing it. This matter of tax receipts that’s much commented about in Guyana, should not have taken so long before ExxonMobil’s Guyana Country Head found his voice and confidence. In Mr. Routledge’s own words, “there were no Guyanese tax credits that were included in either of those tax filings. He was referring to tax years 2023 and 2024, because the company did not earn any profits in both of those years. It is a testimony to the ExxonMobil’s local head skill that he rechanneled the question and the narrative from tax receipts to tax credit.
The question that we at this publication have is straightforward. Since ExxonMobil and its partners (the consortium) are not paying taxes, then why get involved with the issuance of a tax receipt to begin with? Why is there even any level of interest in tax receipts, given its zero-level tax status in Guyana? The Production Sharing Agreement of 2016 between ExxonMobil and Guyana is clear. ExxonMobil does not pay taxes, and that should have been that, with all discussions and controversies about tax receipts clanking to a halt.
It was a group of overseas-based Guyanese that are part of a US 501© qualified public charity named the Oil and Gas Governance Network (OGGN) that did a considerable amount of lifting with this ExxonMobil tax receipt issue. OGGN kept the issue alive before Guyanese, and going as far as writing to the Government of Guyana for details relative to what was involved in the issuance of tax receipts. The group did not make much progress with the government, but that was not the end of the matter.
While the PPPC Government (and ExxonMobil) may have comforted themselves that they had succeeded in slamming the door shut on OGGN with its pesky tax receipt probing, it was a false dawn. The concerned Guyanese at OGGN were still pushing the issue from behind the scenes, and not in Guyana, but all the way into the United States Senate. The end result of their zealous activity is that three US Senators have followed through on the concerns by writing to ExxonMobil’s CEO, Darren Woods, for information by October 23, so they can review, decide about, what happened. A priority interest of Senators Whitehouse, Van Hollen, and Merkley is whether US taxpayers are subsidising ExxonMobil, with the same tax receipt issue featuring prominently.
In his Monday press engagement, Routledge singled out the group for mention when he said that it may have “misled” the US Senators. Carefully hedged, but with a lot of room for the kind of dancing that Mr. Routledge seems to be getting better and better at. It is worth noting that the ExxonMobil Guyana head focused mainly on 2023 and 2024, when the company had no profits, per his statement.
The follow-up to that is why, then, was that US$1.3B tax waiver that was issued by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) to ExxonMobil necessary? What does that qualify as in Routledge’s thinking? We note that ExxonMobil’s Form SD filing for 2024 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission represented that US$1.2361B in taxes were paid to the Guyana Revenue Authority. The facts on the ground are that no such taxes were actually paid by ExxonMobil itself.
This is becoming more mysterious and more revealing simultaneously. No taxes paid, tax waiver issued, Form SD filing, but all is pure and innocent in the US. A cloudy and dubious issue just thickened in both respects.
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