…says there were many blocks, but no takers

JUST days after former President, Donald Ramotar, admitted in court that he was unaware of the exploratory experience of an oil company he gave contracts to in 2015, Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo admitted, on Thursday, that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Administration was “liberal” with its giveaway of oil blocks.

At a press conference on the said day, Jagdeo sought to explain the decisions of the PPP administration with the signing of oil contracts, just days before the 2015 General and Regional Elections. These companies which received contracts have been labelled as “inexperienced” in deep water exploration by oil and gas experts.

Meanwhile, international news agencies such as Bloomberg and others have noted that “rights to drill the area were awarded during the final days of Ramotar’s term” and “nine days after the Kaieteur lease was signed, the government announced that Exxon had struck oil in a well called Liza-1”. “We were quite liberal with getting people to explore,” Jagdeo admitted on Thursday.

The Opposition Leader stated that Guyana “had a lot of blocks but no takers” which contributed to Ramotar’s decision. Although a main critic of oil contracts signed by the government, in this case, his defense is that the contracts signed under the former President can be easily renegotiated in the future. He told the media: “The People’s Progressive Party’s position is that the contract signed under the PPP and the Tullow contracts and others signed after the Exxon Mobil arrangement, they all going to be renegotiated, so there is no exemption of those signed under the PPP or Ramotar too because every single one of them must now be renegotiated based on a model agreement that brings more benefits to Guyana.”

On Wednesday, the Kaieteur News reported that, in court, Ramotar was recently crossed examined by Attorney-at-law, Nigel Hughes in relation to the merits of the contracts his government signed with four oil companies in 2015 for deep-water exploration in the Canje and Kaieteur oil blocks.

These companies included Mid Atlantic Oil and Gas Inc., Ratio Energy, Ratio Guyana and JHI Associates. The Opposition Leader also spoke to the June 1999, Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) of former President, Janet Jagan, with Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, which saw some 600 blocks being granted. “In 1999, Janet Jagan signed that exploration agreement with ExxonMobil and then Exxon did not, for almost a decade, do any drilling because the CGX issue came up and they declared force majeure,” the Opposition Leader said.

He stated that his entire tenure in office was spent trying to fix Guyana’s border dispute with Suriname and the moment it was settled, Exxon resumed exploration. “So, I did not, in the entire period in government, issue any new contacts. Then Donald Ramotar issued a few of these contracts but they were all done prior to us finding oil and at a time when people did not want to do the drilling because drilling costs a lot,” he said. He criticised the government’s renegotiation of the recent contract with ExxonMobil as “lopsided” and hinted that the negotiation was “illegal” although, he stated, that his statement was based on rumours he could not verify.