You gotta hand it to the PNC/AFC for their misdirection plays in our oil (and oily) business. And you know what “misdirection” is, don’t you, dear reader?? If you’ve ever seen those 3-card hustlers in action, you’ll notice they pull off their scam by making the mark focus on some other object, away from the card they’re changing. In the case of the oily Opposition hustlers, they’re trying to focus our attention on everything else under the sun than the original sin they committed through Raphael Trotman in Houston.
See that? You’d already buried that horror in your memory banks – hence your lifted eyebrow!! Yes…the most atrocious Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) made since old man Rockefeller swindled those Saudis to have his Standard Oil (S.O. – hence “Esso” and then Exxon!!) to ship their oil at pennies per barrel in 1938!! That wasn’t rectified till 1973, when the Saudis formed OPEC!! Here Trotman took a US$18M bonus – which he promptly buried! – when the going rate shoulda been around US$600 million!! And then accepted Exxon writing off their expenses at up to 75% of the revenues from the oil sales – and only splitting the remaining 25% with us!!
So, when Opposition MP David Patterson excoriated the Govt and claimed Exxon had told them back in the day that the expenses from Lisa 1 would’ve been amortised by 2022 – and we should now be raking in half of all production – he took pains not to mention the sordid background. So, what’s the scoop? When Lisa 1 started pumping oil in Dec 2019, we were told US$4.5B had been invested, including $1.2 billion for the Liza Destiny FPSO. Just about a year later, Hess revealed that the actual development costs were just US$3.5B. Hey…when you’re in the oil business, what’s a billion or so difference??
So, even though Patterson doesn’t want us talking about the giveaway oil contract – or the diamond-studded bracelet he was “gifted”!! – we should check out his figures, shouldn’t we?? And don’t bring up that claim that “25 isn’t the majority of 65”, to fault the man’s math, will you? Political math’s ABSOLUTELY different from accounting math!! The Government’s resourceful Resource Minister claimed they’re still crunching the numbers, and that it wasn’t easy, since our accountants haven’t a clue about the oil business and its expenses!!
So, are we to expect collecting half of Lisa 1’s 120,000+ bpd going forward in the immediate future?? Man, oh man!! 60,000 bpd @ US$90pb = US$5,400,000 daily; so, in a year (365 days) we’ll rake in about US$2 billion!! And Lisa 1 still got another five years to go before running dry – while we collect our 12.5% on the others coming on stream!!
Happy Days are here??
…agri production
While, of course, we gotta knock the Europeans for introducing slaves and indentured labourers for their plantations in these parts of the world, we gotta recognise that those plantations were an innovation in the realm of producing agricultural products for food and other uses, like cotton for clothes!! Plantations produced stuff like it’d never been produced before. Well, it looks like we’re on the cusp of another agri revolution here.
President Ali just announced a new regional agriculture technology campus is gonna be built in Guyana by India – part of plans to use technology to increase food production. India, of course, has been forefront in food production since independence, when they stopped the famines of British rule cold in their tracks!! The “green revolution” was part of that new technology; but, as we now see, the necessary fertilizers, insecticides, weedicides and water had their own downside.
So, as we move into this brave new world, let’s ensure we work WITH Mother Nature! She can be bitchy when angry!!
…the City Council
The Mayor and City Council are pretty miffed that Central Government’s literally cleaning their mess. Since they can take the credit by claiming they “made” the Govt do that, why worry? The citizens still gonna vote them in!!
