Despite extensive criticisms about the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) that Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman signed with ExxonMobil, Government has not seen the need for any further amendments to be made to the document. See more here
Minister Trotman is reported (18th Jan) as stoutly defending ExxonMobil’s investment here. He says that Guyana should focus on what has been gained. Like what? The 2% royalty? The Falkland Islands have negotiated 9%. This tiny territory of 4,000 people will get 4.5 times as much as Guyana on every barrel of oil. Tarron Khemraj…
By now many Guyanese are pondering the important concept known as the natural resource curse. Government ministers, high-paid government consultants and some news outlets have been talking about it since the discovery of high-quality crude oil in Guyana’s offshore waters. As early as 1995, the concept was first observed statistically by development economists and researchers…
Just days after its major oil find at the offshore Ranger-1 site in the Stabroek Block, ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, EEPGL is preparing to begin drilling at the Pacora-1 well site. According to an advertisement in today’s Stabroek News from the Maritime Administration Department, Esso Exploration & Production Guyana Ltd (EEPGL) will on January 25 begin a…
In relation to the newest Ranger-1 well announced a few days ago, it was said in an SN article: “It has more than 230-ft of high-quality, oil bearing carbonate reservoir which is now being described as the single largest find in the (Stabroek) Block. Questions may well be asked as to why the Ranger site…
Late last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Brazil received US$1.88 billion in signing bonuses for six exploration blocks during a process of competitive auctioning. Chad in 2001 received US$25 million in a signing bonus for sour crude oil with lower viscosity compared with Guyana’s high quality sweet crude. Signing bonuses are also paid…
The notion of the STATE sharing the production of oil and gas with companies as part of a commercial enterprise was first developed in Bolivia in the 1950s. Today it is widely used in over 40 countries, so the Government of Guyana cannot claim that the unavailability of international experts to advise it was the…
Exxon Mobil Corporation announced today positive results from its Ranger-1 exploration well, making it ExxonMobil’s sixth oil discovery offshore Guyana since 2015. The release today said that the Ranger-1 well discovery adds to previous world-class discoveries at Liza, Payara, Snoek, Liza Deep and Turbot, which are estimated to total more than 3.2 billion recoverable oil-equivalent…
Oil companies always have a long list of demands; one of them being tax holidays. In the case of Guyana, the Government has granted ExxonMobil a premium tax exemption package. According to Article 15 of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with ExxonMobil, “no tax, VAT, excise tax, duty, fee, charge or impost should be levied…
Some nations make the sorry mistake of only fearing the worst and begin preparing for it when oil companies head into production phase. But an oil spill can happen when operators are in their exploratory stage. This was the case of the great Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was recognized as the worst oil spill…
