A CoI into the oil contract is necessary. Each day, the magnitude of the black-gold betrayal worsens as Guyanese find out more details about the ugly contract. The oil contract was not a case of an international company with incredible financial backing and human capital outsmarting us and outnegotiating us. Rather, the oil company wins in every way and Guyana is left with another natural resource that has been stolen from us. Worse, our own government aided and abetted the stealing of our national patrimony. Raphael Trotman handed our oil wealth to the oil company with Guyana merely scraping crumbs off the floor. We were sold out, not outsmarted.
If a CoI is ever necessary, the oil contract cries out for a CoI. Someone or a group of people is responsible for the fiasco, a fiasco that will see Guyana robbed billions over the decades to come. Our national patrimony, equally belonging to all Guyanese, has been recklessly squandered. Whomever is responsible, one thing is certain, the buck stops with APNU/AFC and President Granger.
There was a reason APNU/AFC wanted to keep the contract a secret. They allowed the company to walk into Guyana and take ownership of our God-given wealth. Now we are supposed to be happy with crumbs taken from the floor. When the paltry US$18 million secret bonus was exposed, APNU/AFC was forced to release the contract, knowing that the most reprehensible giveaways were contained in the attachments to the contract, attachments that were never released. Gradually, every day, we find out more and more of what is contained in these attachments and it makes the blood of every objective Guyanese boil.
Soon after the contract was released, the Leader of the Opposition raised the issue of gas as a by-product of oil production. The oil company gets total ownership of the gas resources from the oil fields for free. The gas production can prove to be as big as the oil itself. In Trinidad and Tobago, gas resources have proven to be now bigger than oil. It is early yet to determine what the gas reserves are from the oil fields in Guyana, but to give it away without safeguarding our interests is preposterous, reckless, and a clear betrayal and abrogation of the welfare of the Guyanese people. We have permitted the company to wrap gas into the oil deal, when we should have had two deals, one for oil and one for gas. The gas giveaway is an aspect that we have not yet focused on in the national discourse. I urge the Leader of the Opposition to keep this discourse active.
Incidentally, the signing bonus giveaway is now looming a bigger sellout than people initially thought. One economist in another section of the media a few weeks ago, using evidence from other jurisdictions, calculated that instead of US$18 million, Guyana should have received a minimum of US$250 million. Now a Guyanese energy expert who works in the energy sector in the US has estimated that Guyana should have received US$1 billion. Indeed, this is closer to what I believe we should have gotten. In the US, the oil company pays private owners between US$350 and US$800 per acre to lease their land for oil drilling and oil production. Guyana has leased over 6.6 million acres to Exxon. This means we get about US$2 per acre. Consider it another way, Exxon paid Brazil a signing bonus that is equal to about 9 US cents per estimated barrel of oil in their reserve, but Guyana gets half a cent per barrel estimated in our reserve. It is a travesty, an absolute sellout.
Each additional detail proves the contract is a crime against our people. We find out that the oil company has already indicated it needs to recover US$460 million for expenses it incurred since it came into the exploration business in Guyana. This is a tip of the iceberg. Incidentally, the visit by a big team of Ministers and their assistants to Texas to visit that they claimed the company paid for, we now find out is being billed to Guyana as part of the US$460 million expense account Exxon just gave us. There are additional reckless giveaways – the company pays no taxes of any kind, does not have to incur cost of insurance for environmental disasters, can import any amount of vehicles duty-free. This is a government that is nickel-and-diming poor sugar workers, but give away hundreds of billions to one of the richest companies in the world. A CoI is necessary.
