Caretaker President David Granger followed up on ExxonMobil’s announcement that it had uplifted its first commercial quantity of oil by promising to proclaim Dec 20 “National Petroleum Day”. His reaction was in line with the anodyne and jejune pronouncements he has become noted for: heavy on symbolism but disjuncture of any associated action that would suggest he has a clue about delivering what he evokes. His rationale was that oil has “brought the prospects of a higher quality of life closer to our households and neighbourhoods. It is a momentous event which we should commemorate for perpetuity”.
But exactly how would he deliver the previously promised “good life” prospects, which died stillborn after 2015? Take, for instance, his promise that his APNU/AFC Government will unveil a ‘Decade of Development, 2020-2029’ (DoD) plan. Why are the Guyanese people to believe this new promise in light of the Government’s callous disavowal of their previous promises? Take the boast that “first oil” has arrived ahead of schedule, meaning that “boat gone a watah” on most of the local content that could have been provided to the upstream activities. The Government has still not approved a Local Content Policy (LCP) document – even three drafts have been circulated and the last one has been trenchantly criticised by several stakeholders.
The PNC Government has clearly missed the connection between “local content” and any “Decade of Development Plan” (DDP) they might want to unfurl. If the latter had been drafted during the past five years, specific skills and other needs would have been identified and these would have given the Department of Energy (DoE) a focused input in the local content plans the energy operators have to submit annually for approval. A mundane example would have been the need for high-quality welders that are presently needed in the O&G upstream activities: these are also even more critical in the infrastructural development that would underpin any DoD plan. As it is, the LCP, if it even gets approved, might be tantamount to closing the valve after all the oil has been shipped.
The Government has also sent an ominous signal by the opaque manner in which it went about selling Guyana’s share of first oil. The Department of Energy, run by Granger’s handpicked environmentalist, insisted on arbitrarily choosing the trading companies rather than instituting an open bidding process while offering a hare-brained rationale that even the Auditor General opined made “no sense”. The Director of Energy said that the companies selected had “refining capabilities” and would be capable of assaying the production so that the price of our oil could be established vis a vis the Brent benchmark already selected for our “light and sweet” crude.
This literally made no sense since there are established assaying companies used by the industry that routinely perform this assaying function and are standard in the industry. The lack of transparency does not just fail the smell test for possible corruption that has characterised so many other new oil-producing states but also highlights the absolute cluelessness of those who have been handpicked by Granger to run the Petroleum Sector. We are still reeling from his selection of Raphael Trotman to negotiate the first Petroleum Sharing Agreement (PSA).
Then, there is the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) Act 2019 – our “Sovereign Wealth Fund” which Granger boasted about. He persists in refusing to accept that this was rushed through the National Assembly in the absence of the Opposition, right after the NCM was passed. And that the Opposition Leader has rightfully refused to accept it as valid since it was passed against all the parliamentary conventions relating to permissible actions by a caretaker administration.
Even Granger accepts, from his comments, that the effects of the NRF not only impact all Guyanese today but also future generations. As such, it needs the widest possible legitimacy, especially in a country such as ours where even when the PNC-led coalition was not a caretaker government, it held a razor-thin majority.
