Govt admits caucus on oil sector strategy was mundane

Government has now admitted that the recent high-level caucus for Cabinet Ministers to engage global thinkers and experts on natural resource management as part of the agenda to prepare for petroleum production in 2020 and beyond was, in fact, mundane or low-key.

Acting Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge, made this admission to the media recently, stating that the caucus was not aimed at learning something new, but exchanging experiences with those who have been teaching or working on petroleum issues across the globe.
“…to exchange with them the challenges that we face, the arrangements we have in place to deal with some of those challenges, and to hear from them how other countries confront those challenges – be it the press, general stakeholders or companies,” Greenidge explained.
According to him, the experts who participated in that caucus requested Government to set out broader objectives: the type of structures currently in place or being considered, and to state how it saw the international community in all of these arrangements. He said, “It may sound mundane or low-key, but that is very important to Ministers who have policy responsibility for the oil.”
Based on persistent calls for Government to renew the current contract it has with ExxonMobil, the acting Prime Minister reiterated the position of the Government – it did not have any plans to revisit the contract. The Government has been advised against that by the experts who attended the caucus.
“As an academic, Minister, regional and international public servant, there has never been an occasion in which you do something that is difficult and you don’t ask yourself, ‘have I done the right thing?’, and you don’t check with others with what they think. That is the case here. In this point of time, we have noted the clamour and taken into account the specifics and see no reason for revisiting the contract.”
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo had said while international advice was good, he also called for the Government to interact more with the local experts and civil society.
“They haven’t seen it fit to include the Opposition. They haven’t seen it fit to engage civil society in a manner that will address their concerns,” he said, while explaining that Government did not even have to formally engage the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
“Even if the people bring the best practices from around the world and speak to this Cabinet about it, there is no guarantee that they will implement any of those things, because they have been given world-class advice prior to this and until now they have ignored it. It’s absolutely no guarantee. It’s a show. They just parading the people to say they are doing something about the sector,” he observed.
The event was facilitated by Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs through its New Producers Group, and featured world-renowned experts Sir Paul Collier, noted Professor of Economics at Oxford University; Sir Shridath Ramphal, Caribbean statesman and advisor; Eric Parrado, former Manager of the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Chile; Ambassador Patrick Duddy, Lecturer, Duke University; Dr Valerie Marcel, Chatham House Fellow; Professor Matthew Andrews, Harvard, Kennedy School of Government; Professor Peter Harrington, Harvard, Kennedy School of Government and Natural Resource Governance Institute Advisor Patrick Heller.