Opinion

In keeping with a recent undertaking, the Government of Guyana yesterday released the Petroleum Agreement entered into on its behalf by Mr. Raphael Trotman with American oil companies Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited and Hess Guyana Exploration Limited and CNOOC NEXEN Production Guyana Limited, from China. The Agreement is dated 27 June 2016 and…

Dear Editor, Quote from the December 24th Sunday Stabroek news report: “A key finding of the report after assessing similar PSAs from around the world is that the Stabroek PSA has the lowest Average Effective Tax Rate (AETR) of “government take”.

Cost Recovery limit The report said that  PSAs here limit the value of production (after royalty) that can be used to recover costs. The mission says it understands that the cost recovery limit in the Stabroek PSA is fixed at 75 percent. “When there is a cost recovery limit and the minimum government share is…

Production sharing agreements or contracts (PSAs), have been, from the time of their earliest introduction to the oil and gas sector, subjected to in-depth critical analyses and/or evaluations from economic, legal, and institutional perspectives. Among the most rigorous and perceptive of these evaluations, in my view, are: 1) K. Bindemann, Production-Sharing Agreements: An Economic Analysis,…

Keeping information from the public only results in distrust and contracts for all of the country’s natural resources should be published,  says Government’s Petroleum Advisor Jan Mangal. “The signing bonus and all revenues should be disclosed.  There are no pros for non-disclosure, only cons,” Mangal told Stabroek News in response to questions posed on the…

The onus was on Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman to tell President David Granger that he would be breaking the law if the US$18M bonus went anywhere else but to the Consolidated Fund, commentator and civil society activist Melinda Janki says. For his role in allowing the illegal act of placing the money into…

Dear Editor, The Justice Institute Guyana strongly endorses the views expressed in Monday’s editorial ‘ExxonMobil signing bonus’ and joins Transparency International Guyana, Chris Ram, Anand Goolsarran and members of the public in condemning the secret payment of US$18M from ExxonMobil to the government. See more here  

Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran says that the controversial signing bonus that the government took should be returned to ExxonMobil as it cannot be considered as legitimate. See more here