THE Ministry of Natural Resources has refuted an article published on an international online site under the headline “Conflict: Tillerson would Write the Rules for Exxon’s Major Oil Find in Guyana.”The article appeared on the ‘The Huffington Post’ and was published on January 17, 2017. According to a statement issued by the Ministry on Thursday, the article inaccurately states that the United States’ Energy Governance and Capacity Initiative (EGCI) is “involved in writing oil and gas regulations for the country of Guyana, where Exxon has just announced another major oil find.”

“There is no truth to the assertion in the article that the EGCI will be playing any part in writing Guyana’s oil governance laws, or any laws for that matter. The Commonwealth Secretariat is the lead agency supporting Guyana in preparing a suite of legislation for the oil and gas industry,” the government statement noted.
It was further noted, “The opportunity is taken to indicate that while the EGCI has been lending support to Guyana for the past six years in the area of capacity building to manage eventual oil and gas revenues, it is in no way writing oil and gas laws or regulations for this country.”

The Ministry made it clear that the relationship between Guyana and the EGCI programme in Guyana predates the Ministry of Natural Resources and the current Coalition Administration as it commenced in 2010.

“Indeed, the Government of Guyana has had many engagements with the officials of the United States’ Department of State as part of the capacity building initiative. However, the EGCI programme has only been partially implemented through a series of scoping studies that were conducted in 2016.”

The statement concluded that the EGCI can be a useful programme once implemented and is but one in a raft of assistance measures that Guyana is receiving to bolster and in some cases build capacity in oil and gas governance.