Separate energy dept: A dangerous development – Opposition Advisor

…tied to PNC takeover of O&G revenues

The creation of a Department of Energy in the Ministry of the Presidency (MotP) with sole control over the purse strings of all oil revenues coming into Government is a dangerous development that must be vehemently opposed on all fronts.
This is according to Economic Advisor to the Political Opposition, Peter Ramsaroop, who said the Department, and not the Ministry “with its control over the deposit account – called Wealth or Natural Resources Fund – is the creation of a slush fund with no parliamentary oversight over the spending of the money receives from our oil fields.”

According to the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) advisor, the Department is no different from outfits created by the People’s National Congress (PNC) and how they were run under that regime during the 1970s and 1980s autocratic rule.
Ramsaroop in fact believes that the recently announced Energy Department to be annexed under MotP, “is part of a much bigger matrix of machinations by the party leader for an autocratic party takeover of Guyana’s oil and gas revenue.”
“What the President has done, has in effect taken control over the revenues to be earned with the oil companies with no oversight, not Parliament to fund the PNC as the Government in Office, always,” Ramsaroop posited.
This atrocity, he said, cannot be allowed to prevail.
According to the Economic Advisor, the Private Sector Commission has already laid its cards on the table and as such, “it is incumbent on the business community more than any other group to arrest the current developments, so together as a multi-stakeholder grouping – Government, Opposition and civil society – chart and govern Guyana’s oil and gas destiny. Let us not leave it in the hands of a few.” Ramsaroop maintains, “for all intent and purposes, Raphael Trotman is still the Minister of Petroleum – a portfolio he holds in conjunction with Natural Resources (no longer Environment).”
“Minister Trotman is the person with whom Petroleum Laws dictate and divulge every power – not the President,” he said.
“The Alliance For Change (AFC) Leader, Mr Trotman, has now been left as a rubberstamp – much like had happened with his colleague rubberstamp Prime Minister, Moses Nagamootoo,” he said.
Ramsaroop also believes the Department flies in the face of international best practices, to have such wealth funds placed under a-political control – so that no one President or ruling party can abuse or laying waste to such a fund. Ramsaroop expanded that “Minister Trotman would have us believe, like he believes, to have the sole powers to pull the purse strings under MotP and the President is a good thing. Would Minister Trotman still would have said this is a good arrangement if it was the PPP who was doing this,” he questioned and suggests, “Mr Trotman’s platitudes do not veil the shenanigans at work as David Granger emboldens his and the PNC’s autocratic rule over Guyana’s oil destiny, more so its oil revenue.”
While the Petroleum Commission Bill has come to a grind with a promise at more amendments, he said, this represents another delay in the establishment of the regulatory commission and by extension a delay in the putting in of the staff, their training and familiarisation with the Department in addition to its teething woes.
“By no stretch of the imagination a task that will be accomplished in less than two years… of interest too, and tied into the bigger matrix of tomfooleries, is the delay without explanation of the approval for the members of anti-money laundering committee,” he said.