Dear Editor,
GUYANESE are bombarded daily via our newspapers with “expert” opinions that state that we are being shortchanged in our Production Sharing Agreement with ExxonMobil and urgings to renegotiate and/or shut down production altogether. My question is, since no local sentiment exists to give up exploitation of our oil resource, why are Guyanese being subjected to this harassment?

Let us examine Tom Sanzillo’s recent claim that every Guyanese citizen owes Exxon $9 million and “Guyana must pay 100 per cent of all costs out of its oil revenues before it is able to receive an actual share of that revenue.” This “expert” seems to have missed the clause in the contract that caps cost recovery at 75 per cent of production; hence, Guyana is receiving revenue monthly and made its first withdrawal of US$200 million on the May 10, 2022. The obvious question is, why Sanzillo and others are deliberately misleading Guyanese? What are their objectives?

Are our newspapers being used as unwitting Trojan horses to deliver a blow on behalf of other energy operators who stand to benefit if Guyana’s oil production is slowed or halted?

Newspaper editors are the gatekeepers and they should ask everyone who offers an expert opinion for a complete integrity statement that should be published. Information should include country of residence, all sources of income, and even minute details such as the source of power to the home and means of transport (since some advocate for the abolishment of fossil fuels).

It is not just the foreign experts we have to examine, our home-grown environmentalist, Simone Mangal-Joly casually suggests: “The average cost for equipment to re-inject produced water reportedly averages around US$300 million – a minimal sum in comparison to the effects of discharging it into the ocean” without stating what those “effects” are, since after decades of research into Produced Water (PW) there is little or no evidence of contamination.

“In the offshore Condition Monitoring surveys, wild-caught fish species collected in areas relatively close to oil platforms have generally shown few indications of exposure of contaminants from PW discharges,” (Grøsvik et al., 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015).

Yet, Mangal-Joly would have Guyana pay for 10 of these US$300 million units; US$3 billion on a whim not backed by scientific research data.

Is Mangal-Joly willing to stand in front of Guyanese and tell them why US$3 billion (enough to prepare the 50,000 house lots) should be spent to appease her?

Of course, this would lead to Sanzillo making an upward revision of the debt he estimates each Guyanese owes Exxon from $9 million to $12 million, and the cycle of talking heads spouting unsubstantiated claims will spiral as they gain traction from each other.

Another “expert,” Melinda Janki, openly advocates for blackmail of ExxonMobil by the Government of Guyana, an extremely ignorant stance to be taken by a self-described “international lawyer.”

Editor, Guyanese have moved past the cusp of development. In 2006 we exited Heavily Indebted Poor Country and have been masters of our fate since; Sanzillo et al. did not even know or care about our nation then, why would anyone believe that they have a genuine concern now? Guyana is in the energy game now and becoming too big a player to be ignored or brought down from the outside, it behooves us to mount our guard internally also.

Sincerely,
Robin Singh