Author: Christopher Ram

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Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded – Column 125 – May 3, 2024

Government should take over Hess’ share

Introduction

The disagreement involving the three Contractors under the 2016 Agreement (Exxon Guyana, Mobil, Hess and CNOOC) and Chevron over the friendly takeover of Hess by Chevron has gone to arbitration in the United States. There is nothing to indicate that the Irfaan Ali Administration has expressed any interest in the matter before the Arbitrators, although it clearly should. Guyana not only has standing and a direct interest in the matter, but a duty to do so. It is too rare an opportunity to pull something back from Trotman’s diabolical act of historical proportions, and we must not let it slip by.

Recent appearances on American television channels CNBC and Bloomberg by Exxon CEO Darren Woods and Chevron CEO Mike Wirth have brought this conflict into the international public eye. Both executives touted their companies’ robust performance in the first quarter of 2024, but Woods’ focus on delivering value to Exxon’s American shareholders while failing to acknowledge the Guyanese people, whose resources are being exploited, has drawn criticism.

The dispute

At the heart of the current dispute is Chevron’s attempt to acquire Hess Corporation, whose Cayman Islands subsidiary has a branch in Guyana which holds a 30% stake in the Stabroek Block. Exxon and CNOOC, themselves branches of shell companies incorporated in low/no tax jurisdictions holding 45 and 25 percent respectively, are claiming that they have preemptive rights over Hess’ shares, as outlined in a secret Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) between them. Woods has publicly accused Chevron of disregarding these rights in its pursuit of Hess.

 For his part, Woods is not only insensitive to the host country Guyana but appears oblivious to the fact that the JOA is subordinate and subject to the Petroleum Agreement signed in very controversial circumstances in 2016 between the Government of Guyana and the three shell companies. Woods boasted about value-creation by Exxon engineers ignoring the fact that the true value lies in the abundant resources and the country’s generosity under arguably the worst petroleum agreement ever – no exaggeration intended. The Agreement itself is governed by the country’s Petroleum Exploration and Production Act and its associated regulations, the essential provisions of which are:

Any transfer of rights, privileges, duties, or obligations under the Agreement or related licenses is subject to prior written consent from the Minister responsible for petroleum.

The Minister is obligated to approve the transfer if it does not adversely affect the performance or obligations, is not contrary to Guyana’s interests, or is to an approved affiliated company.

If the Minister fails to respond within 60 days of receiving the request for transfer, consent is considered to have been granted.

The assignee is bound by all terms and conditions of the agreement or license.

A specific form must be used when applying for an assignment or transfer.

Ignoring Guyana

Neither Woods nor Wirth made any reference to the Guyana legislation or the Agreement. But now that the matter is brought to its attention, it would be interesting to see how Guyana’s government will address the matter on which it has so far been totally silent. The Government should use this opportunity to assert our national interest, a successful outcome of which could have significant benefits for the country’s economy and its ability to benefit from its substantial oil reserves on behalf of the people of Guyana. As managers and  trustees of the people’s patrimony, the Government needs to get off its knees in supplication to the oil colonialists and function as the law states, “that the property of petroleum existing in its natural condition in strata in the national territory is vested in the State.” And in keeping with the government’s overriding duty  to the people of Guyana.

The law and the Agreement vest in the Minister responsible for petroleum a decisive role in the matter. He can refuse approval for the transfer of Hess’ interest to Chevron, which could potentially result in the interest reverting to the Guyanese government. On the grounds that the transfer of Hess’ interest to Chevron is contrary to the interests of Guyana, he could refuse to grant approval.

Woods insists, without proof – other than that Exxon wrote the JOA – that under the JOA, the transfer is subject to the preemptive rights of Exxon and CNOOC. Whether or not Chevron’s acquisition of Hess violates such rights as may exist, once the JOA is found to be inconsistent with the Petroleum Agreement and with Guyanese laws, the Minister has sufficient grounds to refuse approval for the transfer. There is a catch. If an application has been made to the Minister, he must respond in sixty days, failing which consent is deemed to have been given. Therefore, if the Minister wishes to refuse approval, he will need to do so within the stipulated time. The question is whether any application has been made to the Minister. It is frightening to contemplate that an application might have already been made and that the Minister has done his usual nothing, then we “caak duck.” 

In the event that the Minister refuses to grant approval and the refusal is found to be in accordance with Guyanese laws and the Petroleum Agreement, Hess’ 30% interest ought to revert to Guyana. It is not without legal significance that each of the three oil companies is a separate contractor, and in any case, a share participation is a capital and not an operating issue. It seems clear that if the Government gives to Hess a licence, it is not Hess’ to pass on to whomsoever it will. It should pass it back to the Government. The Agreement defines “contractor” as the three named companies and their “permitted assignees.” (Emphasis added).

The Government’s starting gambit should be refusal and a statement that it will buy out Hess’ interest, paying for it out of future profit oil. It is not inconceivable that Exxon and CNOOC would be presumptuous enough to tell the Government of a sovereign state that it cannot take a stake in its own resources. Exxon is known to walk over developing countries.

Sadly, relevant as they are, the real issue is not about Exxon, CNOOC or Hess/Chevron but whether the Government has the courage, the rectitude and the independence to show the oil companies that at the end of the day, the resources belong to Guyana and its Government will not allow itself to be excluded or pushed around. Not that this is going to be easy, and we all know about the litigious nature and instinct of oil companies. Let us be as prepared to protect and regain something of Guyana’s patrimony.

    

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No other current issue of greater import I can think of other than Jagdeo’s attack on the country’s judiciary and the troubling silence emanating since

Dear Editor,


Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has made a searing attack on a ruling by a High Court judge in the Teachers’ strike case in which the underlying issue is free collective bargaining. Despite not having read the judgment, Mr. Jagdeo yet felt comfortable using words like appalling and presumptuous. However couched, this has to be seen as an attack not only on the judge but the judiciary as a whole. There are three branches of government – the legislative, the executive and the judiciary, each with its own functions and powers, giving rise to the concept of separation of powers. Not that the separation is clean or discrete as we see with the intermingling of the executive and the legislative. But the branch which does not allow for such intermingling is the judiciary, which has a special role in any democratic society.


Since the PPP/C’s return to power in August 2020, the guardrails of democracy are being inexorably dismantled, emphasising why the independence of the judiciary needs to be protected and defended. It is therefore dangerous when the country’s First Vice President, apparently after a conversation with the Attorney General, should use language that can undermine the authority, independence and integrity of the judiciary. As everyone appreciates, the judiciary with its layers of appeal procedures has a mechanism for its wrong decisions to be reversed. That is healthy and good for society and citizens, as well as the development of the law.


It is accepted that a decision given by any court should be open to robust but respectful criticisms, never in a way to bring the court into disrepute. Mr. Jagdeo might say that he never intended to attack the judge but only the judgment. That unfortunately is not how his statement came across, particularly since he admitted that he had not read the judgment. Jagdeo has a reputation for bullying and intimidation which creates an atmosphere of fear and what is sometimes referred to as a chilling effect. Perhaps in his statement, he was sending a message beyond the single judge and to the entire judiciary that “this can be your fate as well.”


It is not without some significance that there has been silence since Jagdeo made his ill-advised statement. But no response is not only cowardice but gives a pass to this kind of behavior. It is true that such attacks are not unique to Guyana. Examples abound from the USA where Chief Justice John Roberts came out to defend the judges of the Supreme Court from attacks by Donald Trump, from Australia, Canada, India, Poland, the Philippines, Türkiye, Uganda and Zimbabwe. What is true as well is that in those jurisdictions, those attacks have not gone unanswered by the heads of the judiciaries.


The head of our Courts in Guyana is the Chancellor (ag.) while we have as our apex court the CCJ headed by a President. The current and the past President of the CCJ have politely criticised Guyana for its inordinately lengthy delays in confirming top judicial officers. They cannot just give up and go silent. We have the Guyana Bar Association and the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers whose members are actively involved in the judicial architecture. They are often accused of prolixity and verbosity, not of silence. The Guyana Human Rights Association must show that the attack on its leadership has not silenced it. Our institution of highest learning has a Department of Law and a Law Society. And where are the lawyers in the opposition parties in the country? And where are the Press, the Fourth Estate? That is the work they chose, but now they choose silence.


It is hard to think of any current issue of greater interest and importance than an attack on the country’s judiciary, whether direct or indirect. The silence is bewildering and troubling.

Christopher Ram
Attorney-at-Law

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Dear Land of Guyana by Moses V. Nagamootoo – Part 2

A book review by Christopher Ram – April 28, 2024

Introduction

There are five parts to Nagamootoo’s Dear Land of Guyana but none of these identifies the theme or what the reader can expect of the chapters within those uneven parts. In the Preface the author writes rather casually about the clinching of the first petroleum agreement in 1999 and its “modification” in 2016, showing that he too did not then, or even now, understand the statutory framework governing the petroleum sector – made more regrettable coming from an attorney-at-law with years of practice. He wrote that in 1969, the PPP enlisted as a Marxist-Leninist party and that following the 1968 rigged elections, he supported its preparation “for all forms of resistance, including armed struggles”. He writes that after the death of Cheddi Jagan in 1997, the PPP began to lose its authentic democratic credentials and became tainted with corruption.

The Preface describes the swings of national political fortunes starting in the 2011 elections held shortly after Nagamootoo and his wife Sita exited the PPP/C and joined the Alliance for Change. Those elections saw the parliamentary defeat of the PPP after 20 years of unbroken rule, for which Moses took a good measure of credit. More was to come when four years later, by what he described as a strategic alliance of opposition forces, the PPP/C lost governmental power. That cycle continued in 2020 when according to Moses, the PPP was “installed into office”, although he did not say by whom.

Chapter 1 describes his unceremonious exit from the Prime Ministerial official residence that speaks to an unfortunate political culture that the winner must not only triumph, but the loser must be shamed into defeat. Chapter 2 gave an account of the recount by the CARICOM Team, the process of which was described “as transparent as could be expected though the same could not be said about the credibility of the ballots”, with over 7,000 claims being lodged about irregularities and anomalies.

Lingering doubts and the 2020 elections

Like Donald Trump in the USA, Moses still seems to harbour doubts that the Government – of which he was the Prime Minister – had lost the 2020 elections. Writing more than three years after the vote, stories that Guyanese “traveled from overseas on broomsticks, voted and mysteriously disappeared” seem too far-fetched to be taken seriously. Further theories advanced by the writer in the following chapter was that Washington had concluded that the Granger government had “become expendable” owing to its unwillingness to play along with the Americans as they sought the removal of Venezuelan President in an “October Surprise”. The theory, coming from Guyana’s Prime Minister and First Vice President, however unsupported by any evidence, will no doubt generate some interest in Caracas.

One claim by the writer which appears to have been supported by empirical evidence, was the role of international elections mischief-maker Cambridge Analytica, which like the National Enquirer of the USA, will do anything for money – and in the 2020 elections they appeared to have done just that, having been paid tens of millions of dollars by the PPP/C. It is unclear why the writer did not link this to the absolute disregard for campaign financing rules which had been so stridently advocated by Sheila Holder, a founder member of the Alliance for Change.

In chapter 4 Nagamootoo writes that following the 2011 elections, Grainger and other opposition leaders had met with president-elect Ramotar and proposed the formation of a government of national unity. According to the writer, Ramotar responded that the PPP had not included the formation of such a unity government in its manifesto, although that was probably not the real reason. What the writer fails to tell the reader is why Granger did not make a similar offer when he was in the driver’s seat. One possible reason is that all the cabinet positions had been allocated in the Cummingsburg Accord, the pre-election alliance arrangement.

The chapter also includes general stories about the internal politics within the PPP, such as Janet Jagan’s arbitrary and autocratic leadership style and the takeover of the Party by the Moscow-trained gang headed by Jagdeo following her death. Specifically, the writer sought to address the imbroglio concerning Cheddi Jagan’s reference to Moses as a capable person to succeed him as President, to which Janet Jagan took particular objection. The writer suggests that it was Jagdeo who caused the departure from the PPP of other stalwarts like Ralph Ramkarran and Khemraj Ramjattan and writes boldly of the huge scandal of Pradoville One and Pradoville Two. He describes the conversion of the government “into a sort of real estate agency, hiving off prime lands at basement prices, and building outlandish mansions.” It was quite surprising that he only indirectly identified the lead role played by Jagdeo in this wealth grab enterprise.

He noted that corruption became a way of life, spying and wiretapping being made legal, lies and slander against critics and members of the opposition, and concerns about whether the country “was only formally a democracy or was descending swiftly into an autocratic, authoritarian state.”

The Magnificent 7

Chapter five is more positive, hailing the seven AFC members elected to parliament out of the 2011 elections as the Magnificent 7. Writing with more than a touch of nostalgia, Moses referred to the big behind-the-scenes players like Dr. Asquith Rose, current GuySuCo CEO Sasenarine Singh, Bish and Malcolm Panday and Frank De Abreu and Robert Badal. Also recognised are several of his close friends from his PPP days and the dozens of AFC members, both local and overseas. Moses appears to take special delight in Raphael Trotman’s description of him as “the greatest strategist and nationalist”, and Freddie Kissoon’s naming him as the Guyanese personality for 2011 who had “taken his place in the history books” while featuring him in some most hagiographical terms.

Chapter 5 reported on the role played by the AFC in the post-2011 during which the AFC played a “constructive role” and appealed to the PPP/C minority government to pull back from the precipice of a stalemate caused by the continuing political apartness between the government and opposition. The chapter closed with the recommendations by the AFC for urgent and serious negotiations and for the parliamentary parties to embark on purposeful dialogue to find consensus on critical issues. Among those issues were the composition of all constitutional bodies, including the Integrity Commission and the Public Procurement Commission; confirmation of suitably qualified persons to fill the senior positions in the judiciary, the Police and the Office of the Ombudsman; respect for collective bargaining and across-the-board increases for teachers, nurses etc.; reduction of VAT by 2% and increases in the Old Age Pension.

Chapter 6 also dealt with the AFC’s role in the 10th. Parliament and gave a good account of the circumstances surrounding to the Budget which reached the High Court, financial management and accountability, the threat by the PPP/C to derocognise its trade union arm (GAWU), the Skeldon “white elephant”, and the wider issue of governance.

Clearly, the book was setting the conditions for the 2015 elections.

To be continued

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Dear Land of Guyana by Moses V. Nagamootoo – Part 1

A review by Christopher Ram – April 21, 2024

Introduction

Coming out from seclusion roughly 3 1/2 years after the end of his prime ministerialship of the APNU + AFC Coalition Government 2015 – 2020, long-serving politician and attorney-at-law Moses Nagamootoo has published his autobiographical account of that period. He is the second leading member of the Alliance for Change in that Government to offer Guyanese their account of their respective roles during that period.

The first was by Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman whose book From Destiny to Prosperity was serialised in parts 110 – 113 of my oil and gas column in the Stabroek News in October/November last year. My initial intention was to apply a different approach to Nagamootoo’s book offering only a book review rather than a serialisation but having created the precedent with Trotman‘s book, beginning today and continuing over the next couple weeks, I will offer a summary of Moses’ book but leaving it to the reader to fill in the details. The book is available for purchase from Austin‘s Bookstore in Georgetown at the price of $4,000 per copy.

Journalistic and literary pedigree

Unlike Trotman’s book, Dear Land of Guyana is a full-length book of 344 pages of twenty-five chapters and the transcripts of three full-length interviews the writer had given to Mr. Yesu Persaud in a television issue program Eye on The Issue and journalist Gordon Mosley and Dennis Chabrol. Coming from a seasoned writer with literary achievements including two novels – Hendree’s Cure and Fragments from Memory – a collection of poems, Paintings in Poetry, and short stories Like Scattered Seeds, the flow of the writing and the quality of the production is of a high quality. His other literary credentials are not unimpressive, having covered major events in Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean as a former Vice President of the International Organisation of Journalists and founder of the Union of Guyanese Journalists.

He was a popular columnist in the PPP sponsored newspaper the Mirror and also credits himself as speech writer, and researcher for former president Dr Cheddi Jagan, assisting the former PPP leader and President in many of his articles and speeches. The book is well organised, contains quotes from many books and sources, providing specific details of events and personalities which suggest that the writer Nagamootoo had always intended to offer Guyanese an insight into the writer’s experiences as a participant in the government of the country. In doing so however, engaged in a mix of facts, impression, speculation and conclusions some of which may seem extreme and far-fetched.

Speculation and conspiracy

In will mention two examples. Connecting the 2018 No Confidence Motion to prior incidents, the writer referred to an invitation by the BJP including references to the BJP Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Guyanese parliamentarians of Indian Origin for a one-day conference in India, outside of the normal diplomatic channels. According to him, the PPP sent 17 MPs to the conference, including former president and opposition leader Bharrat Jagdeo, former minister Irfan Ali and former Attorney General Anil Nandlall, while only three Indo-Guyanese from the governing parties were invited, including Charrandass Persaud. Continuing, the book states that “Being far away from Guyana, at the same conference, and at the same place, it must have been too tempting (for Jagdeo and Charrandass Persaud) not to talk.”

While he did not name the other two MPs from their side, Moses linked that occasion with his own prior experience with the Indian Government some ten years earlier during a visit to India to accept an award from an NGO. According to him, he was approached with an offer of support by two seemingly well connected, ultra nationalist elements, one of whom had since ascended to a top government post under the BJP. The condition? That Nagamootoo commit himself to certain Indian geo-political and strategic interests in the Caribbean Indo-populated triad – Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname. According to the writer, they scooted when he offered them a drink of a 15 -year Guyana rum from under his desk.

The second was a US Government connection. The right to reported that on a return from a trip abroad, his head of security informed him that the powerful foreign businessman wanted to meet him urgently. He let that slide but then on 7 February 2020, on a trip to the Rupununi, he met a tall and lean (unnamed) man in blue shirt and khaki pants and the person’s wife who was introduced as the niece of Mike Pompeo. Apparently, the man wanted a large tract of land to use for “skills training programs” and that the project would focus on disaster emergencies for which he would access various types of aircraft, Even promising Black Hawk helicopters.

In developing this episode, or rather speculating further, the writer linked the approach with a Reuters report that the US Department of State had posted a $15 million reward for the arrest or capture of Venezuelan President Maduro. Nagamootoo speculated that “mercenaries” could have contemplated an armed incursion into that neighbouring state, using Guyana as a launching pad.

When Nagamootoo reported his Rupununi encounter to President Granger, he was told not to “touch that man …. The guy wants to meet you about a training project.”

Preliminary response

The book ought to demand some response, denial or corroboration to the several incidents although with the absence of a reading culture in Guyana, there may be few direct responses. A former colleague of Nagamootoo from his PPP days was quite dismissive of the book despite not having read it while at the same time expressing an unwillingness to criticise the book because of the “sterling work which author had rendered to the PPP during the struggle for free and fair elections.”

A more recent colleague, having read Chapter 3 Foreign Interference, again, offered this view of what can be considered the most provocative chapter of the book.

“He’s described a few factual events and framed them in the context of American interests in the region and then connected those events via conjecture to America’s interference in our 2020 elections, leaving readers to make some mental leap to rigging. I sense a blurring of the line between interference and rigging. Also, did the interference occur prior to, or after the elections, or both? The reference to Ambassador Lynch doing what she had to do is meaningless without elaboration.

“I don’t think he makes a strong enough case that there was anything unusually sinister about our 2020 elections other than the attempted rigging by GECOM which was rightfully condemned by many, including the Americans. There’s a lot that can be stripped away such as the earlier Trinidadian experience with Cambridge Analytics and the 2015 Ramoutar campaign. These really have no bearing on anything that may have taken place in 2020.

“The clear attempt by persons in GECOM to rig the 2020 elections remains unaddressed – at least in that chapter.”

The writer can also be very direct. He also accuses former president Donald Ramotar and PPP senior member Harry Nokta, of heckling him at the funeral of Isahack Basir, a PPP/C stalwart , singling out Ramotar for making the damning accusation that “Moses kill Basir”. He also describes Peter Ramsaroop, a Guyanese American who had formed a political party in Guyana in opposition to the PPP/C as a “political hustler” and who was a key figure in the confidence operation to topple the Coalition government.

To be continued




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Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded – Column 124 – March 29, 2024

Questions for the confident Alistair Routledge, Exxon Guyana’s President

Introduction

During the recent Oil and Gas conference in Guyana, Mr. Stephen Sakur, renowned BBC journalist, did a brief interview with Exxon Guyana’s President Alistair Routledge about its operations in Guyana. Unfortunately, the limited nature of the engagement did not allow Sakur the high standard which viewers across the world associate with his flagship programme Hard Talk.

Mr. Routledge was his usual self, confident of the obsequious support of Guyana political leaders. While he has consistently demonstrated a preference for foreign journalists, soft questions locally and false billboards, he would do Exxon a world of good and remove some of the more serious suspicions and accusations against them, if he could provide direct responses to the following.

  1. Shell had paid Exxon for two farms-in in the Stabroek Block, for a total of 50% interest. Can Mr Routledge say how much was paid by Shell and whether the money was credited to the accounts of the Guyana operations?
  2. Can he also state for the edification of Guyanese, how much Hess and CNOOC paid to Exxon for their 55% share in the Stabroek Block and whether those sums were credited to the accounts of the Guyana operations?
  3. The audited financial statements of these three oil companies (Exxon, Hess and CNOOC) at 31 December 2015 showed a total expenditure of US$368 million, while the companies claimed US$460 million as pre-contract costs incurred up to that date. Would Mr. Routledge present to the Guyanese public a reconciliation of this difference?
  4. The Companies Act of Guyana only allows an external company to hold an interest in land with the approval of the President. Would Mr Routledge identify the President who granted that approval to lease land in Ogle?
  5. Under its lease from the Government of Guyana, Ogle Airport Inc is permitted to sub-lease land only for narrowly defined activities. Can Mr. Routledge identify the government official who authorised the exemption from this requirement to allow for the construction of an Administrative Office, and whatever else?
  6. Whether Exxon and its partners obtained from the Government approval of their joint operating agreement, the date of such approval and the Minister who granted that approval?
  7. Whether the purported takeover of Hess by Chevron constitutes an assignment by Hess to Chevron for purposes of Article 25 of the Petroleum Agreement for which approval of the Minister is required?
  8. Particulars of annual tax credits claimed by Exxon in the USA in respect of its Guyana operations and provide evidence of the GRA certificates of taxes paid, used to claim tax credits.
  9. Would Mr. Routledge state whether he considers a receipt for taxes not paid by Exxon not only raises legal and ethical questions but violates the OECD/G20 Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting which requires large companies to pay a 15% effective minimum tax rate?
  10. The Laws of Guyana only allow the petroleum minister to grant to any company a single petroleum agreement. Would Mr Routledge state the statutory basis for a second agreement over the same area even before the first Agreement had expired?
  11. Can he identify for Guyanese the provision in the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act the authority for a Bridging Deed and state the name of the Government official with which Exxon negotiated such a deed?
  12. Can he state the role of Sir Shridath Ramphal as Escrow Agent under the Bridging Deed and whether he (Sir Shridath) was retained and paid by Exxon or the Government of Guyana, and to meet EITI disclosure requirements, how much he was paid?
  13. Is it correct that US$15 Mn. of the “signing bonus” of US$18 million was intended to take the legal case against Venezuela to the International Court of Justice, the success of which would be a major benefit to Exxon?
  14. Would he agree that it is a complete misnomer to describe the US$18 Mn. as a signing bonus?
  15. There are four types of expenditure provided for under the Petroleum Agreement. Can he provide details of any expenditure under the categories “Costs recoverable only with Approval of the Minister” and Costs “recoverable subject to the approval by Minister” over the past four years?
  16. Would he provide a statement of the annual costs of petroleum deducted from Gross Revenue for purposes of royalty payment to Guyana under Article 15.6 of the Agreement?
  17. And further, confirmation that such costs are also not deducted as operating expenses.
  18. Would he provide an estimate of how much Guyana has lost annually in Profit Oil since 2020 in the absence of ring-fencing?
  19. Whether Exxon accepts that the Government of Guyana has the power to set conditions on the granting of a Production Licence, including ring-fencing?
  20. Has the Coalition Government or the current Government formally raised with Exxon the question of ring fencing?
  21. Former petroleum minister Raphael Trotman wrote in his book Destiny to Prosperity that a named Exxon official was involved in the Cabinet Paper for the 2016 agreement. Would Mr Routledge confirm the name of that person as Mr. Brooke Harris?
  22. Has Mr. Routledge read the Clyde & Company report into the 2016 Agreement, and does he have any disagreement with the facts set out therein, including the role of Mr. Harris?
  23. Whether he as the President of Exxon had confirmed that Mr Bobby Gossai had the necessary authority to clear US$211 Mn. of US$214 Mn. not supported by evidence provided to the auditors?
  24. Has Exxon agreed to pay the Government 50% of the US$214 million which was therefore wrongly claimed, and if not, why not?
  25. Would Mr. Routledge confirm that the ministerial audit and the Guyana Revenue Authority audit for tax purposes are two separate and distinct audits?
  26. Can Mr. Mr. Routledge state the quantity of proven petroleum reserves of the Stabroek Block as at the end of February 2024.
  27. Mr. Routledge must be aware that Mr. Raphael Trotman, former Natural Resources Minister has indicated that he would give evidence in any inquiry into the 2016 Agreement. Would Exxon participate in any Commission of inquiry established by this government to look into the circumstances leading to the 2016 agreement?
  28. Does Exxon consider that the exploration and production activities in the Stabroek Block harmful to the environment and a breach of the Paris Accord? If yes, what measures are in place to mitigate such effects?
  29. What is the estimated total cost of the gas-to-shore project and is any cost being charged against Oil Revenue?
  30. Would the procedures and the valuation of private property compulsorily acquired for the project comparable to how eminent domain operates in the United States of America?

Conclusion

Mr. Routledge is aware that Exxon will be the dominant player in Guyana for the next forty years or more and is no doubt concerned about the negative image associated with the company and its operations. It is in the interest of Guyanese to have answers to burning questions about the 2016 Contract, the company’s operations and the unconscionable situation of a country with a high poverty rate paying the taxes of one of the world’s top companies. He must be aware too that Guyanese have a right to have their questions and concerns addressed, by those who are enjoying the benefits of the people’s patrimony. It cannot be too much to ask a major beneficiary of that patrimony to provide responses that will allay the fears of the people.