Road to First Oil – Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil Minded; Column 190 June 28, 2026
By Christopher Ram
(Kaieteur News) – ExxonMobil Guyana Limited has now filed its financial statements for 2025, and with Hess’s and CNOOC’s already reviewed, we can now do the simple math of comparing the profits earned by and the share of the Government under the 2016 Agreement which holds that the arrangement under which the Government earns the same amount as the combined earnings of the three companies.
We now know that ExxonMobil which holds a 45% interest in the Stabroek Block in 2025 recorded revenue of G$1.713 trillion and a profit before tax of G$1.214 trillion, about US$5.8 billion; after the income tax it is deemed to have paid, it kept G$982 billion, about US$4.7 billion. By contrast, Guyana’s 50% share of profit oil, was G$451 billion, about US$2.1 billion. Exxon’s 45% of 50% is equivalent to 22.5% of the total. Yet, it recorded a profit before tax nearly three times the profit oil earned by the country.
Chartered Accountant and Attorney, Christopher Ram
Taken together, the earnings of the three companies recorded revenue of G$3.59 trillion in 2025 and a combined profit before tax of G$2.52 trillion – about US$12 billion. This means that for every dollar earned by Guyana on its 50% share, the three companies earned about $5.5 in profit. Even more dramatic is that the income tax on the profits of the oil companies was G$474 billion, itself larger than the whole of the nation’s profit oil.
Source: Audited financial statements adapted for consistency
Since the first barrel
Step back to 2020 when production began. From then to the end of 2025 – six years – the three companies had combined revenue of G$12.30 trillion and a combined profit before tax of G$8.58 trillion, or approximately US$41 billion. After the tax they recorded, they kept some G$7.02 trillion. Guyana’s profit oil over the same period was G$1.58 trillion – about US$7.57 billion. Look at the Table above.
The proportion is more than just stark or steady. While the overall average is a “modest” 4.89 times, the oil companies averaged over five and a half times over the past two years. 2020 – the first year of production – was an outlier: the three together earned barely a quarter of Guyana’s opening profit oil. That now sounds like ancient history. Since that heady year, the ratio of oil companies to country has seen that number hover between five and six to one, reaching very nearly six in 2024.
The Natural Resource Fund – Nothing would be left
There is one more figure, and it should stop the reader. Over the same six years the three companies recorded income tax of G$1.56 trillion – almost exactly the profit oil the nation received, G$1.58 trillion. Whatever numerologists might make of that, it is real – and it is troubling. Article 15.4 of the 2016 Agreement says the State pays the companies’ income tax, and that the appropriate portion of Government’s share of profit oil is “accepted as payment in full” of that tax liability. Contractually, and we know how sacred that is, the oil companies’ taxes are paid from profit oil. Subtract one from the other – G$1.56 trillion from G$1.58 trillion – and the NRF nation is left with G$22 billion. A drop. After it, the Fund holds only the two-per-cent royalty and the interest earned.
This must trouble every Guyanese, told by the politicians that the Fund is a patrimony – a store of wealth held in trust for the generations to come. The PPP/C Fund architecture was sold to us as superior to that of the Coalition established and supported by intelligible rules and ceiling on withdrawals, all protected by a self-reinforcing structure of committees, managers, advisors and Board. The underlying commitment to both present and future generations that there will be enough to transform our country and its patrimony into a cycle of wealth and wellbeing. Sadly, before the ink dries, before even the first generation attains maturity, that architecture has been debunked by the calculations above.
In fact, if the Agreement is applied as written, almost the entire Government’s share of profit oil would be exhausted in discharging the tax obligations of companies representing the two largest economies in the world. This is like an intellectual horror show, self-imposed in an utter surrender of the country’s sovereignty. What is left to set aside for the unborn is the two-per-cent royalty and the interest the balance earns: a thin remnant, not a patrimony. Six years into one of the fastest oil developments the world has ever witnessed, on the Agreement’s own arithmetic, there is nothing of substance to bequeath. An inter-generational fund with nothing to pass between the generations is a mirage, a fool’s hope.
Look at it: only one of two things is true. Either the Agreement has been honoured, in which case the entire profit oil of the country would be gone, or that the Agreement has been violated – big time. Not by the oil companies, but by a Government that claims that the Agreement is sacred, and that says it respects the rule of law. Let us look at the evidence. The audited financial statements of the Natural Resource Fund are there for all to see. The only withdrawal is used as general budgetary support, which itself is a violation of section 16 of the Natural Resource Fund Act.
This then leads to another mystery, itself concealed in another illegality. The mystery is that the oil companies have been issued with tax certificates even though the National Estimates show conclusively that no such payment was made to the GRA. What we are faced with is that a government which does not have the courage to invoke the renegotiation clause in the Agreement, is quite comfortable breaching another of the Agreement’s Articles – all to avoid an inconvenient truth.
Next week, we will look at how the oil companies have played their part – shamelessly and improperly – in this great, big falsehood.