Mr Robin Mills, a guru in the oil industry, writing for The National, an online and print media platform, posted on October 8, 2018 that “Guyana may be the next big beast in global oil”. Mills foresees the country emerging as the top per capita oil producer.
It is noteworthy that Mr Mills ignored the robber baron two per cent royalty in the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) between Exxon, its two partners Hess and Nexen, and the Government of Guyana that is so blatantly minuscule, odious and obnoxious.
Guyana, after being referred to as a frontier state by international energy research firm Wood McKenzie and now an oil beast by The National, has indeed suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; our economic straits have now housed us as a global oil nation, without remedying the abysmal two per cent royalty that enchains us.
Many are inclined to focus on the shadowy and smoky 50/50 “profit sharing” post expense contract stipulation; it is more a contrivance than a condition of any value, that should be ignored, due to its subjectivity in the treatment of capital and current costs and what could be deducted and set-off from the profit share remnants, if any; with special emphasis on the mysterious, coreless and fungible pre–contract costs.
The will of the Guyanese, who seek and strive to obtain a fair share of our oil resources by having the incomparable, incongruous and incompatible two per cent royalty renegotiated, is undiluted. Whether we have one billion or 15 billion barrels of oil; whether we are governed by PPP/C or PNCR, we must benefit meaningfully from our resources.
Every Guyanese politician, non–governmental organisation, private sector executive, some local commentators and international organisations such as Chatham House, Natural Resource government institution, among others, try to treat us as myopics and encourage us to focus on the terms of post Exxon’s contracts. The attempted segue is an oily herring that is a form of glad-handing with the handlers.
The global oil giant ExxonMobil currently controls Guyana’s Stabroek Block, which represents 100% of commercial oil discovered in offshore Guyana as at September 30, 2018.
Yet, we have some analysts and commentators, twisting themselves into pretzels, by seeking to have Guyanese focus on other oil contracts that the Government of Guyana has with Repsol, Tullow, Mid-Atlantic and Total, among others; though these companies have discovered zero oil. Let us focus our energies on revising the contract with Exxon and its partners.
ExxonMobil’s modus operandi is to have side agreements and buy-in option agreements. If discoveries are made by most of the other oil investors, it will largely be to Exxon’s benefit.
Some of our learned and “objective” oil aficionados have made a stormy fuss about the difference between one percent and two percent while overlooking the depraved nature of the beastly contract with Exxon that has, so far, accounted for over five billion barrels of known oil recoverable reserves carrying a plunderous two per cent royalty. The specialists compute the value of one per cent of zero while the exploitative two per cent contract with Exxon is not mentioned or made invisible to the general public, even as it is covered in sanctity and sanity by overlooking its morass contract terms.
Let us not endorse and make a reality of the words of Sophocles, the greatest of the Greek tragedians that “The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”
Yank and revise the 2016 PSA as consistently requested by Christopher Ram, Melinda Janki and Ramon Gaskin.
Malcolm X, less than three months before his assassination, immortalised his place in time with the following:
“I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think, it was, who said, ‘To be or not to be.’ He was in doubt about something – whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune… or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. …if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time.”
Let us as Guyanese, join forces across party lines, across racial lines and speak with one voice to change this monumentally stupid contract.
Nigel Hinds
October 14th, 2018