Exxon’s 2025 Financial Statements – and What It Has Taken Out
Overview
ExxonMobil Guyana Limited this week filed its audited financial statements for the year ended 31st December 2025. Once again, the numbers are staggering: from a 45% interest in one block, total comprehensive income of $982,476M – very nearly one trillion Guyana dollars – after charging income tax it does not pay. It took Guyana fifty-nine years to build its first trillion-dollar budget; Exxon’s minority slice approaches that in a single year, for foreign shareholders, in under a decade.
In the interest of brevity, I will not trouble readers with a detailed review of the company’s income statement and the balance sheet: they speak for themselves, jarring the ears of every self-respecting Guyanese. Instead, this column steps back to the larger picture they occupy – what the accounts and the Petroleum Agreement, read together, reveal about how much of this nation’s oil, and this nation’s money, leaves the country and how little stays. How we came to be imprisoned to such terms, and by whom, is another story.
The “50-50” that is not equal
At a press conference to share the financial statements, Vice President John A. Colling was asked why, in a “50-50” agreement, the oil companies take so much more than the Government. We know Colling. He was the same individual who in 2024 announced a “60%” revenue rise when it was 56% – volunteered that “75% of all revenues” currently go to cost recovery, that “you see that reflected in the IFRS financial statements,” and that the 50-50 falls on profit oil “after recovery of costs.”
Colling does not seek to confuse revenue with profit oil; he distinguishes them. Under the Agreement the 50-50 bites only on profit oil – what survives after the 2% royalty (Article 15.6) is set aside, and up to 75% of each month’s production lifted as cost oil (Article 11.2). On his own figure, 25 cents in the dollar reaches the profit-oil pool, and the State’s half of that, with its royalty, is about 14 cents. He explained, in the language of reassurance, why a “fifty-fifty” hand the nation one-seventh of its own oil. But then promised the media that improvement would come.
What is interesting is that Colling undermined the assertion in the financial statements about IFRS when he introduces the motion of petroleum accounting which was never before mentioned by him or his predecessors. In any case, all he did was confirm suspicions with this new information.
IFRS, and the cost that disappears
Never the less, his claim that “You see that reflected in the IFRS financial statements” is one that the accounts will not bear. Indeed, that statement undermines the audit report validating the financial statements. The Agreement suggests the recovery of costs as incurred, with no depreciation schedule for capital (Annex C); IFRS does the opposite, capitalising that sum and releasing it slowly as depreciation – $300,758M, about 18% of revenue, against total costs of just 29%. What is beyond doubt is that a 75% cash recovery is nowhere on the face of the accounts. The company plead “petroleum accounting”. The auditors certify full IFRS and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana mandates it, and the public is confused. Either the cost recovery belongs in these statements and must be disclosed, or it is a separate computation that must be reconciled to them. Exxon does neither, offering no bridge from the Agreement’s waterfall to its published profit. The largest charge of all in the income statement – depreciation – has no note. I can think of no IFRS that supports recovery of a hugely substantial cost being undisclosed in the financial statements. This omission explains why and how the income statement of one of the three contractors discloses a 57% margin – completely out of line with the 12.5% earned by the country.
What Exxon has taken out, and what Guyana finances
Since first oil, on its 45% alone, Exxon has earned about $3.2 trillion – $607,186M by the end of 2022 with nothing paid out, and almost $2 trillion more since. It took nothing out until 2024; then it repatriated $1.14T in two years, untaxed. Set that against every dollar of capital the parent has ever contributed – $1,127,835M: the cash taken out has now overtaken the entire investment ever made. Exxon has been made whole, and $2,062,951 million of profit still sits undistributed, waiting to leave.
On top of all this we pay its taxes – some $630B in three years on the 45% alone – from our own profit oil. And this is Exxon’s 45%; add Hess and CNOOC and the take more than doubles.
What Exxon has taken out – EMGL’s 45% interest only (G$ millions)
| EMGL – 45% interest (G$ millions) | Amount |
| Total profit earned since first oil | 3,199,407 |
| Repatriated to head office (2024–2025) | (1,136,455) |
| Undistributed profit at 31 December 2025 | 2,062,951 |
| Capital contributed by the parent | 1,127,835 |
| Article 15.4 tax borne by Guyana, 2023–2025 | 629,929 |
Conclusion
Exxon has not changed its strategy, nor even the man who reads the script: the same Mr. Colling, merely promoted. The architecture stands exactly where the Coalition built it and the PPP/C maintains it – a 2% royalty, up to 75% cost recovery, a 50-50 on the crumbs, no ring-fencing, a Tax Order that pays the contractor’s taxes from our own oil, and a cleanup bill that Guyana partly funds. The oil is leaving by the tanker-load, the profit by the trillion, and the money we pay to keep it sweet leaves dressed up as the company’s own income. Our patrimony, the profit it yields, and our own treasury – three things not taken from Guyana but given away, and counting.
Walter Rodney, assassinated 46 years ago, and whose memory we recall today, must be wondering how we got here. We will try to answer that question next week as we close the round-up of the Contractors’ 2025 financial statements.