US senators likely misled on tax filings – ExxonMobil Guyana’s Routledge

President of ExxonMobil Guyana, Alistair Routledge on Monday said three United States (US) senators were likely misled on its tax filings for its Guyana operations.
Last month, three US Senators had written to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ExxonMobil Darren Woods seeking answers to a series of questions in relation to the company’s tax filings for its Guyana operations. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Chris Van Hollen, and Jeff Merkley sent the letter to Woods on September 23, 2025 and are seeking a response no later than October 23, 2025. Under ExxonMobil’s 2016 contract with the Guyana Government, ExxonMobil Guyana’s income taxes are paid using Guyana’s share of oil profits. The US senators are concerned that ExxonMobil may be using those Government-paid taxes to claim foreign tax credits on its US tax returns. If so, it would effectively allow ExxonMobil to reduce its US tax liability using taxes it did not actually pay, potentially resulting in an indirect subsidy from American taxpayers. As such, the US senators have asked ExxonMobil to clarify its tax filings and justify any credits claimed under these circumstances.

It was later revealed that a New York-registered non-governmental organisation (NGO), Oil and Gas Governance Network (OGGN), whose members comprise primarily of Guyanese living at home and abroad, had convinced the US senators to write ExxonMobil on the matter. Asked to comment on these developments during a press conference at the company’s new Ogle, East Coast Demerara (ECD) Headquarters, Routledge said the NGO may have misled the US senators.
“It would appear that OGGN, perhaps, misled the senators somewhat. ExxonMobil Corporation in its ‘23, ‘24 tax filings, there were no Guyanese tax credits that were included in either of those filings and you would recall prior to 2023, we were not making profits here in Guyana, so there were no tax credits from that. So up until this point, there have been no Guyana tax credits that have been used by ExxonMobil,” Routledge stated. In fact, Routledge told reporters that ExxonMobil Guyana is still operating in a negative cash flow of around US$6 billion. “We continue to be actually cash flow negative on an accumulative basis… we’re probably still around about US$6 billion on a negative cash flow as we look at the accumulative expenditures and accumulative revenues that we’ve seen from the Stabroek Block,” he noted. In June 2025, ExxonMobil Guyana’s Vice President (VP) John Colling had revealed that the company recorded GYD$1.255 trillion in profit before tax in 2024. Despite the profits, however, Colling had emphasised that the company was still in the red. According to the financials shared with the media, ExxonMobil’s total operating expenditures were GYD477.6 billion last year, with total royalty paid, GYD34.1 billion. Depreciation and amortisation were meanwhile the largest single sources of operating expenses, recorded at GYD$301.8 billion last year as against GYD182.4 billion in 2023. The operating expense also includes GYD22.7 billion in exploration costs, a reduction compared to 2023, and GYD61.2 billion in production costs, an increase compared to 2023. Under the terms of the 2016 contract, ExxonMobil is allowed to recover its investment in the Stabroek Block, via cost recovery. Specifically, no more than 75 per cent of revenue from ExxonMobil’s share of oil lifts goes towards cost recovery.