The Transparency Institute Guyana Inc (TIGI) is suggesting that international laws could protect Guyana from the most egregious provisions of the oil agreement with an ExxonMobil subsidiary since by contravening domestic law it violates several of the guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In the ninth installment of a series of…
In the Thursday September 12, 2019 edition of Stabroek News (SN), our claim that the award of the petroleum exploration licences was subject to the Public Procurement Act was rejected by the Public Procurement Commission and by Dr. Anand Goolsarran, a former auditor general and past president of TIGI. Our column to which these individuals…
In a succinct and elegant statement, Thomas Dye defines public policy as “anything a government chooses to do or not to do” (Dye, 1972: 2). Public policy therefore has a wide reach and affects all sectors of society. It encompasses laws, any actions of government, funding priorities and the regulations that reflect given positions, attitudes,…
In our last article, we dealt with the miscalculation of the licence area in the contract with Exxon. Prior to that we discussed some history which suggests that the claim that Venezuelan belligerence was the justification for the resort to illegality in the invention of wholesaling of license blocks when no such concept was available,…
In our previous articles, we have charged that the contract is illegal for the simple reason that at its root the contract is based upon an illegality, to wit, the issuance of the entire area of 26,800 square kilometers under a single licence instead of as the law required, 6 or more independent pieces each…
In our last article we presented facts that suggested that the claimed need for Exxon as insurance against Venezuelan hostility to justify the breach of the 60-block maximum per contract was an overstatement to use the most polite word. Today we discuss alternatives to that action taken by the then minister and supported and maintained…
We continue our analysis of the arrangement with Exxon by looking at the claim that the Venezuelan belligerence was the justification for the selection of Esso/Exxon and that this belligerence constituted special circumstances under Section 13(3) of the Regulations made pursuant to the 1986 Petroleum act. Both governments since the signing of these contracts have…
Today we want to examine the validity of the exercise by the minister of the discretion provided by regulation 13(3). Our research shows that no other country in the world has seen it fit to do what our minister did in 1999. The minister at the time used her discretion to exceed the maximum stated,…
In March last, the British High Commissioner is reported (KN, 20th March, 2019) as having told the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GCCI) that corruption is a job for Government and the Private sector to team up against. TIGI agrees with the broad thrust of this contention. However, in many countries and many instances…
Recently, the number and prominence of foreign analysts who have corroborated the early view expressed by local analysts have increased. This is the view that the contract is heavily weighted against Guyana. Two of these foreign analysts have been OpenOil and the IMF. Yet, there is one aspect of the consideration of how bad a…
