APNU+AFC never had any intention of getting the best value for Guyana’s oil resources – Parliamentary records expose

When the APNU+AFC administration had buckled under pressure in December 2018 and released the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) it signed with ExxonMobil, international and local stakeholders were thrown into a state of bewilderment.

They asked, perhaps more than a million times over, how former Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, could give away Guyana’s prime oil assets for crumbs.

Kaieteur News and other media entities had asked the former Minister to provide the names of the experts who advised him to accept, for example, a mere two percent royalty, a US$300,000 annual payment for local content, and a deal which overall, is filled from page to page with gaping loopholes for significant revenue leakage. He never provided those names. But more queries followed. Importantly, Guyanese wanted to know why the official it elected to protect its interest, not only failed to do so, but gave ExxonMobil and its partners, an oil deal so unfair to the nation, that another of its kind cannot be found in any other part of the world. While the full truth to these questions may not be known at this point, what this newspaper has been able to ascertain via parliamentary records, takes transparency advocates a bit closer to understanding the modus operandi of the APNU+AFC regime during negotiations with ExxonMobil back in 2016. Those documents made it clear that neither Trotman nor the APNU+AFC administration ever intended to get the best deal for Guyana, even though they were fully aware of the quality of the resource at stake.

During a meeting of the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources held on May 18, 2018, Trotman had appeared to make a presentation on the oil industry and other matters. Many questions were asked, one of which was proffered by the then Chairman, Mr. Odinga Lumumba, who sought to ascertain which party initiated the changes to the terms of the agreement and whether this was done in the nation’s economic interest. Trotman noted in response to the first part of the query that it was the Government that initiated the changes.

(Kaieteur News)