Dear Editor,
Three Ministers of the Government — Minister Raphael Trotman, Minister Dominic Gaskin and Minister Khemraj Ramjattan — recently released, via the press corps, incorrect information to the public to the effect that in 1997 according to Minister Trotman, 2008 according to Minister Gaskin,and according to Minister Ramjattan 2011, the then President, Bharrat Jagdeo, had amended the Petroleum Act so as to ensure that the ExxonMobil contract cannot be released to the public.
They cannot even get their dates straight when concocting their stories.
These contradictory pronouncements by the three ministers are all fabrications. Neither President Jagdeo nor any other PPP President ever amended the Act to prevent disclosure of the contract.
There is an obvious agenda by members of the coalition Administration, with collusion from their financiers, to malign the reputation of Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo.
Shortly thereafter, at a recent press conference, Minister Patterson, supported by Ministers Ramjattan and Cathy Hughes, also informed the Guyanese public that there were no remaining un-assigned oil blocks because Jagdeo had already distributed all to favoured awardees. Again, this is palpably untrue, and has compelled me to release the list of concessions and expose the malicious lies being repeated by the current administration in another effort to defame Mr Jagdeo. The following advisement reveals that, of the ten existing concessions, none had been given out by the Jagdeo Administration.
Faced with exposure of this lie, the decent thing to do was to apologize and withdraw the erroneous claims. Instead, in sections of the media on September 22, the minister, in another act of deception, now claims that all the offshore blocks are gone, and that is what he was referring to. This is another falsehood, which is debunked by the map published by the GGMC outlining the offshore blocks that are yet available.
• ExxonMobil was given by the Late Hon. Janet Jagan –1999
Eight were given by former President, Hon. Donald Ramotar; to wit:
• Mid-Atlantic — 2015
• CGX 2012 — 2013
• Repsol — 2013
• Retio — 2015
• Anadarko — 2012
• On Energy — 2013
• Nabi – 2012
The tenth one was given by Minister Trotman under the Granger Presidency to Tollow Eco. Based on recently released documents by GGMC, there still remain several unallocated blocks.
Let me hasten to add that all of the blocks allocated by PPP presidents were properly issued; as a result of which ExxonMobil invested millions of dollars, which led to the discovery of oil.
I wish to deplore the constant misrepresentation of facts by the coalition Administration, and the incessant repetition of these falsehoods by sections of the print media. It seems that deflecting the public’s attention away from their own inadequacies and ungrounded accusations against PPP leaders, especially Mr Bharrat Jagdeo, is a norm in the construct of the coalition and its partners in the media.
One glaring instance is the lie that has been exposed – time and again — that is yet repeated by coalition ministers of Government and reprinted in sections of the media.
Trotman’s allegation in Parliament: that Mr Jagdeo and the PPP gave out all of the productive land in the forestry sector, has been repeatedly refuted. According to the Opposition Leader: “The fact is that about fifty-five per cent of the state forest has been given out so far in our history. It’s about seven million hectares out of 12.5 million hectares; and out of that 55 per cent, just about 40 per cent is under extraction. Of the (millions of) hectares that were given out, almost half was given out in the pre-1992 era. Barama alone had 1.7 million hectares.”
