text: No amount of misrepresentation can contradict facts – former President - Guyana Times
  Home Letters No amount of misrepresentation can contradict facts – former President
  No amount of misrepresentation can contradict facts – former President
  Oil blocks distribution
  For over a week now the politically tainted officials of the State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) have been engaged in what is undoubtedly an attempt to divert attention from the inept management of Guyana's oil and gas sector by APNU/AFC Coalition Government.
  • The applications by companies for exploration in the Kaieteur and Canje Blocks date back to 2012 and 2013, respectively.
  • Both applications were processed and approved by the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations around late 2013. All fees paid were fixed by law and were paid to the GGMC, not to any private accounts.
  • Dates of signing and sequence of subsequent discoveries are all in the public domain and were published in the Official Gazette for the public's information. There was full transparency on this.
  • Delays in the signing of the agreements were due to matters surrounding Venezuela's navy seizure of Anandarko contracted seismic vessel Technic Pardana in late 2013.
  • At the time of application, processing, approval and signing of the Petroleum Prospecting Licenses for the Kaieteur and Canje blocks in Guyana's offshore there was NO confirmed commercial petroleum discovery in the area by ExxonMobil or any other company.
  The advertisement, which was published on May 8, 2018 – after the agreements were signed – confirmed that no oil was found.
  The GGMC, as a matter of government policy, was for many years, encouraging exploration interest in our offshore given the United States Geological Survey's estimate of Guyana's hydrocarbon potentials and also to have a presence to reassert our territorial rights over the area. This was one of the reasons for what some term generous fiscal concessions. There were simply very few other ways to stimulate interest in exploration. Prior the confirmed oil find in 2015, our basin was considered very high risk. In fact, in 2014, Shell voluntarily gave away its rights to half of the entire Stabroek block for a mere $1.
  Additionally, why is Professor Thomas silent on the new agreements signed by Natural Resources Minister, Raphael Trotman, under the current Administration, after the confirmed oil find, which included provisions not dissimilar to the ones I signed, as President, when there was no confirmed oil find? Would it not have been better for Guyana if new provisions were included in the contracts signed by Minister Trotman, since there was a confirmed oil find of an estimated three billion barrels? Why were stronger agreements not signed? And why is this failure something that SARA is not looking into? Is it that SARA is convinced that the APNU/AFC cannot stand scrutiny?
  Another APNU/AFC operative, Eric Phillips, is reported to have told the Kaieteur News that he wants to ascertain why no signing bonus was negotiated. I am appalled that after four years in government that a person in such a senior position would raise such an issue which displays a total lack of understanding of the issue. We could not negotiate a signing bonus when we were signing an exploration agreement and not a production agreement?
  I wish to also point out that last year, when the APNU/AFC Coalition Government came in for severe criticisms of its failures to properly manage our emerging oil and gas sector, talk of an investigation was peddled by Professor Thomas. It would seem that with similar criticisms currently dominating the news cycle, it is not unexpected that Professor Thomas' mutterings about an investigation would return.
  I wish to make it clear that I welcome any investigation that is done by an independent and impartial international firm. No Guyanese can expect a non-partisan investigation by SARA. Any unbiased, professional independent review will once more confirm all due legal processes were followed and during the PPP/C time in office the country's best interest was served, given the realities of the day.
  That said, no amount of maneuverings by the APNU/AFC Coalition Government, and its puppets at SARA, to divert attention from its inept management of the developing oil and gas sector will be successful. Guyanese are clear that since the confirmed oil find, the Coalition Government had failed to represent their interest – from the renegotiation of the ExxonMobil contract in 2016 to the failure to complete a basic Local Content Policy, after four years in office.
  Instead, Guyanese are made to contend with an Administration that, among other costly missteps, failed to disclose the receipt of an $18M signing bonus and attempted to steal those monies. Had it not been for the exposure in December 2018, those monies would have remained off of Guyana's books – as it has for over three years.
  Currently, responsibility of the oil and gas sector falls under President David Granger – having been moved from one minister to another over the past four years – and the state of affairs remains the same. There is no clear direction to ensure that developments in the oil and gas sector are guided along a trajectory that would benefit Guyana and all Guyanese.
  Finally, I note the screaming headline on page one of the May 31, 2019 edition of the Kaieteur News with a sense of recognition – it was the same trend that the PPP/C had to contend with for 23 years; misleading, unsubstantiated and sensational publications geared to promote 'certain' interests.
  No amount of misrepresentation for political and other reasons can contradict the facts. I repeat, we in the PPP/C have nothing to fear from an independent and impartial investigation.