Several oil contracts may not be upheld by a PPP government

From all indications, while the People’s Progressive Party / Civic (PPP/C) is uncomfortable with the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) that Guyana has with oil giant, ExxonMobil, the party is prepared to let that contract stand even if it regains control of Guyana in 2020.

At a recent press conference, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo said that Guyana is now at the stage where it must focus less on the unfair provisions of the “poorly negotiated” contract and look now to make sure that it is not robbed of what it managed to secure under the contract.

However, Jagdeo said that many of the contracts signed after the ExxonMobil will not be upheld by a PPP/C government.

“We may not recognize all of these contracts that were signed after the ExxonMobil one…We may very well review all the others. Why did we say that? Because the government itself said— after it came under pressure from the public—that the ExxonMobil contract was because it is a frontier company. We already establish we could have gotten better but they said no other company would get those concessions.”

Jagdeo said that despite such commitments, Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan still took an order to the National Assembly to give Mid Atlantic similar concessions to that given to ExxonMobil. “We asked for it to be put on hold until that policy is worked out in the government and made public.” Jagdeo said that the government should be quick to establish a framework to say: “this is what ExxonMobil got and this is what the other companies are likely to get…But the government refused to do that. As a result of this lack of transparency, we reserve the right to revisit all of those, because you cannot claim frontier status anymore.”

(Kaieteur News)