Latest update September 3rd, 2026 10:25 AM
Investment fully recovered – where’s the govt.
Editorial…
(Kaieteur News) – The US$55B that ExxonMobil invested in Guyana’s offshore Stabroek Block is now fully recovered. That long-awaited piece of good news came from two of the company’s highest-level executives. In the strange world of Guyana and its oil, there is a curious state of affairs, only the newest one, in an environment that is rich with oil. Those who own the oil should be ahead of everyone in delighting to this announcement however they are silent to the point of sadness. Where else in the world but Guyana could there be the reactions that should have come before the company and did not? Why not some existence of a pulse felt in Guyana’s oil after ExxonMobil’s second quarter news became public?
ExxonMobil CEO, Darren Woods and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Neil Hansen, confirmed in their different ways that the US$55B investment in Guyana has now been fully repaid. The investment is liquidated,which should translate to the Cost Bank now standing at zero. Now that the Cost Bank is where it is at, what is there as Cost Recovery? Cost Recovery was killing Guyana, since it is enshrined in the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) at 75% straight from the top of oil revenues, minus royalties. All of Guyana should now be celebrating a true half and half profit split. To be clear, celebrating an equal (50:50) division of 100% of oil revenues, and not 25% split into two. That is something to celebrate and anticipate, so, where are Guyana’s most vocal stewards over its oil and gas sector?
Specifically, it would be very encouraging for Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, to say something about the cost bank depleted and that Guyana should start to receive a real half and half profit split, per the 2016 PSA? Jagdeo is known in some local circles as Guyana’s Oil Czar, does he not want to share his excitement over more millions in the New York based Natural Resources Fund and what that means locally? He has been asked several times in the past few years one question with different words used. When will Guyana start to collect the half and half split that is now due?
We at this paper have been next to unceasing in pushing questions concerning the oil and gas sector before President Irfaan Ali and Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat. They have mostly reacted in one way: Jagdeo is the oil and gas man. Minister Bharrat tried on a few occasions, with two things becoming obvious immediately. First, he is not quite sure where he stands on the issues, despite the fact that he is the official subject/responsible minister. Second, it seems that he was always operating with his hands tied behind his back, and that he was careful not to speak out of turn for fear of upsetting the people to whom he reports. The impression that always attached to Minister Bharrat is that no matter how much he said, he came before the microphones with some sort of gag order in place.
On the other hand, Jagdeo carried another name locally: Guyana’s chief oil and gas policymaker. We have learned several things in dealing with Jagdeo over the decades, a couple of which sticks out brightly. Whenever he is afraid of where an answer could lead him, he makes himself scare. A second is that when there is some trickiness in the air with a much-watched issue, he argues pointlessly, or occupies himself with other matters, so that he can claim that he is busy. Whatever is at work will soon come to light. Sooner or later, he will have to say something about Cost Bank elimination, Cost Recovery now out of the picture, and the half and half profit split now due to Guyana. Two top executives of ExxonMobil are now on record about the company’s US$55B investment paid off. Somebody in the Guyana Government has to break the silence that now hangs so bafflingly over what Woods and Hansen shared with the world.
Today, we do not want to touch the hanging livewire of the cost bank replenished. Better to focus on where Guyana Government main oil leaders stand with more oil profits.
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