Govt. seeking expert advice 

Sep 01, 2026 Editorial, News

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(Kaieteur News) – Guyana may have been conned out of billions, not because the country lacked oil, but because successive governments failed to adequately protect the nation’s most valuable resource.

That is the troubling allegation being advanced by businessman and Kaieteur News Publisher Glenn Lall, and it deserves more than political dismissal. It deserves a full examination of the books. At the heart of the controversy is ring-fencing—the principle that each petroleum development should stand on its own financially. Under such an arrangement, the costs of one project cannot simply be recovered from the revenues generated by another producing project.

Guyana did not secure that protection in the 2016 Stabroek Block Production Sharing Agreement. Lall argues that Guyana was advised to ring-fence the projects, beginning with Liza One, but successive administrations failed to implement that safeguard. The Coalition Government had its opportunity. The PPP Government had its opportunity. Neither acted. And now, after years of production and billions of barrels of oil revenue, President Irfaan Ali says his government will seek expert advice as Guyana moves ahead with additional developments. That announcement raises an uncomfortable question: Why now?

Where were the experts when the existing arrangements were being negotiated? Where was the urgency to protect Guyana when the first barrels of oil began flowing? And why should Guyanese now be satisfied with assurances that the Government will seek advice for future projects when the financial consequences of past decisions remain unclear?

For years, Guyanese have heard enormous figures about ExxonMobil’s investment in the Stabroek Block. Billions upon billions of US dollars have been cited as evidence of the scale of the company’s commitment and the enormous risks it supposedly undertook. Former Opposition Leader and now Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo himself has repeatedly pointed to the magnitude of those investments, arguing that Guyana’s entire banking system could not have financed even one of the projects.

That may have been true at the beginning. Liza One required substantial upfront capital before Guyana was earning petroleum revenues. But the fundamental question changed once Liza One started producing. According to Lall’s argument, the oil revenues generated from producing projects became available within the broader cost-recovery mechanism to recover expenditures associated with subsequent developments.

The issue is no longer simply how much Exxon and its partners initially put into the ground. The question is: after Guyana’s oil started generating billions, whose money was financing the projects that followed?

Liza One’s development cost was initially estimated at approximately US$4.4 billion and was subsequently reduced to about US$3.5 billion. Liza Two, meanwhile, was approved at approximately US$6.6 billion. Lall argues that without project-by-project ring-fencing, revenues from producing projects could effectively support the recovery of costs associated with projects that had yet to produce a single barrel.

That is not a minor technical issue. It goes directly to the amount of money Guyana receives today. The same concern extends to Payara, Yellowtail and subsequent developments. If revenues from existing production are being used within the cost-recovery structure to recover expenditures for newer projects, Guyanese are entitled to know precisely how that affects the country’s share of petroleum profits. This is where transparency becomes indispensable.

The Government should publish a clear accounting of each development: the approved cost, actual expenditure, recoveries to date, the source of those recoveries, production revenues and the corresponding impact on Guyana’s take.

More importantly, Guyanese should be shown what the numbers would have looked like if each project had been ring-fenced. If the answer is that Guyana lost billions in earlier petroleum revenues because of the failure to ring-fence, then the nation deserves to know who made that decision, why it was made and whether warnings were ignored.

And if the Government believes Lall’s contention is wrong, then it should demonstrate that with the numbers. This should not be reduced to Exxon-bashing, PPP-bashing or Coalition-bashing. Oil is too important for partisan protection. The wealth beneath Guyana belongs to Guyanese. Governments come and go. Political parties rise and fall. But the consequences of a badly structured petroleum agreement can remain for decades.

The time for vague assurances has passed. President Ali says expert advice will now be sought. Fine. But Guyana needs more than advice for tomorrow. It needs an accounting for yesterday. If successive governments made decisions that deprived Guyana of billions, the public has a right to know. And if no billions were lost, the Government should prove it. The oil is Guyana’s. The answers must be Guyana’s too.

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• Editorial, expert advice, Guyana Oil, oil profits

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