Category: The Road to First Oil

EITI Admission

That troublesome confidentiality provision in the law and the Petroleum Agreement has once more attracted attention with the announcement that Guyana is now officially the 53rd candidate country of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Officially, EITI is aimed at openness around the governance of natural resources and one would have expected that the admission of Guyana was as a result of commitments made by the country concerning such openness. It is difficult to reconcile openness with the refusal to provide the country, the National Assembly or the individual Coalition Partners with any information on the Petroleum Agreement signed by Minister Trotman in August 2016.

Readers of this column are aware of my strong conviction that there was absolutely no reason for a new Petroleum Agreement with Esso and its joint venture partners. The Agreement lasts the entire duration of the Prospecting Licence and the Production Licence so the question or the mystery is the reason for a new Agreement. A source has indicated to me that the reason is not as mysterious as it may seem. Indeed, the explanation offered to me is very simple. The Government of Guyana used the excuse of a new licence to extract a signature bonus, a payment made by a contractor on the signing of an Agreement to take up any given number of blocks. The figure I have been told is twenty million United States Dollars. Continue reading “Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 21)”

Introduction

Column 19 last week summarised how petroleum produced is shared between the Contractor and Guyana represented by the Minister. Now, if the parties were to take their respective shares and act independently, selling their share of the crude, or refining and selling it as they wished, there would be no need for the Agreement to include any provision or rules concerning valuation. In Guyanese parlance, that would be their business. In other words, Guyana can do as it wishes with its share while the Contractor will be able to do likewise. But life is not so simple, nor are petroleum operations.

Guyana’s share of the production, at least in relation to the Liza Block, is a minimum of 14.5% of the number of barrels of oil produced (2% for royalties and 12.5% as minimum profit share). In column 19, I had expressed the view that for practical purposes, Guyana will not physically take up its share and will more than likely request ExxonMobil to refine and dispose of its uptake. I admit that I am discounting, at some risk, the possibility that Guyana may choose to sell its share at the wellhead to one of the other joint venture partners in the Liza Block.

Recall that the shares in the Joint Venture are held 45% Esso Exploration, 30% Hess and 25% CNOOCNexen. It may be far simpler, tidier and will pose less accounting and audit issues, and possibly disputes, if Guyana decides to sell its share to any of the partners at the wellhead. The more curious will immediately ask from whose share does the 14.5% to Guyana come. The answer is that it comes out of the gross and the JV partners will take their respective shares of the net. Continue reading “Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 20)”

Disposal of Production

Recall that under a production sharing contract, costs are deducted from the value of production to arrive at profit oil to be shared between the contractor and the Government of Guyana in the proportion set out in the contract: Article 11.6. The contractor is also permitted to use as much production as needed in the operations and within the transportation and terminal system.

If the reader thinks that the system is becoming complicated and therefore subject to dispute, it gets even trickier since there may also be some third party usage of the transportation terminal systems. Where there is such third party usage, the quantities so used or lost outside of the contract area is proportionate to the aggregate use of the that system and the value is excluded from any calculations under Article 11. Continue reading “Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 19)”

Trotman and Turbot

The good news

This column keeps meeting distractions from week to week. Column 17 last week indicated that Articles 12 Natural Gas and 13 Valuation of Crude Oil would be addressed later in this series. They will have to wait as we turn to two issues taking place this week, one the good news and the other the bad stuff. Let us start with the good news first. Yesterday October 5, ExxonMobil Corporation announced yet another oil discovery offshore Guyana. This means that since the May 2015 announcement of a huge find we have had four other finds. Liza, Payara, Snoek and Liza Deep, and now Turbot. The well was drilled to 18,445 feet (5,622 meters) in 5,912 feet (1,802 meters) of water on Sept. 29, 2017. The Turbot-1 well is located in the southeastern portion of the Stabroek Block, approximately 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the southeast of the major Liza phase one project.

Guyana is blessed. All we can hope is that good and intelligent leadership and competent and careful management will ensure that we do not transform this blessing into a curse. Experience shows that nothing can be taken for granted, internationally or in Guyana. Continue reading “Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 18)”

Introduction

Today’s column looks at what is called Cost Oil, both in the petroleum industry around the world and in the Petroleum Agreements signed by Guyana with contractors. Generally the term is used to mean the expenditure which the operator can charge against income in arriving at what is called profit oil. Cost oil falls under Article 11 of the Model Petroleum Agreement which carries the broader heading “Cost Recovery and Production Sharing”. A comparison of the Model Agreement and the 1999 Agreement signed by Janet Jagan with Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (Exxon) shows that the two are identical, give or take the capitalisation of a few letters!

Here are two of the opening paragraphs extracted from the Agreement.

“11.1 Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, the Contractor shall bear and pay all contract costs incurred in carrying out petroleum operations and shall recover contract costs only from cost oil as herein provided.

“11.2 All recoverable contract costs incurred by the Contractor shall, subject to the terms and conditions of any agreement relating to Non-Associated gas made pursuant to Article 12, be recovered from the value, determined in accordance with Article 13, of a volume of crude oil (hereinafter referred to as “cost oil”) produced and sold from the contract area and limited in any month to an amount which equals [seventy-five percent (75%)] of the total production from the contract area for such month excluding any crude oil used in petroleum operations or which is lost. “Recoverable contract costs” means such costs as the Contractor is permitted to recover, as from the date they have been incurred, pursuant to the provisions of Annex C. Continue reading “Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 17)”