TIGI’s request for info from ExxonMobil, gov’t has gone unheeded

At the beginning of the Esso Exploration & Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) Stakeholder meeting, 10 a.m. on Friday Feb 12, 2021, CEO Alistair Routledge said they wanted to be transparent and accountable. And they took the trouble to invite Transparency Institute Guyana Inc (TIGI). Later in the meeting when questions were asked, Mr Routledge said EEPGL is providing the Government with all the information, no doubt because the Government is the elected representative of the people and the meeting was of barely one hour’s duration.

So after EEPGL did not get back to us with the Zoom recording and the process flow diagram we requested, we felt we should take Mr Routledge’s advice and ask our Government, who also keeps claiming they are transparent and accountable, to provide us the information we seek.

On March 26, specific requests were made to the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), copied to the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). All they had to do was to fill the daily information they are purportedly getting from Exxon in the table of an Excel sheet. The technical operations presenter at the Feb 12 Stakeholder meeting said it was complicated but that the data has to be there for obvious control purposes, so we added a simplified scheme of some of what the table requires. Both the scheme and the table are based on the fundamental laws of conservation of matter and energy.

We further offered to elucidate for the MNR and the EPA any items of our request for information that they did not understand, and the importance of having those items.

Meanwhile, we have noted VicePresident Jagdeo’s intention to employ a consultant to get the information from Exxon for Guyana. This is good, but if he did not know what to ask, why didn’t they send our request for the promised daily information from Exxon? Shall we continue to wait for any information they condescend to filter down to us?