-President Ali says; despite former coalition gov’t dealing Guyana a bad hand

AS the government remains firm in its tracks to write a compelling narrative of development, President Dr Irfaan Ali has stated that the oil and gas sector will continue to be used to create betterment for the Guyanese people.
As the nation’s energy landscape continues to expand under the current administration, Dr Ali highlighted some of the steps taken so far to achieve this goal and to reverse the effects of the former APNU+AFC government’s policies and heavy taxation that restricted the growth of the nation.
He made these comments during a press conference last week at State House, when questioned about the transparency within the rapidly evolving sector.
The government has consistently outlined their plans, which has placed the nation as a fast emerging and dynamic player in the regional and global economy.

More so, President Ali highlighted that Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo has a healthy discourse on this topic and answers questions on the sector at his weekly press conferences.
Adding to this, Dr Ali said: “We have made it very clear, there are historical things that we would have liked to be better. We would have liked for the negotiations then to give us a better agreement but we have an agreement that we have to work with. We have enacted laws, put systems in place to ensure we maximise the benefits we can get out of the existing agreement. We have committed ourselves to a new Production Sharing Agreement for any future arrangement.”
Moreover, the sector’s evolving role and its energy developments are not isolated from the government’s overall goal of ensuring prosperity for all.
In this regard, he highlighted how the local private sector is on the cusp of transformation.

The Local Content Act (LCA) enacted under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government has paved the way for the local private sector to benefit extensively.
On December 31, 2021, the Government of Guyana passed the LCA 2021. Subsequently, it published several related guidelines that were designed to maximise the participation of Guyanese companies wherever they have the skills and capacity to get involved, beginning with services such as office space rental, janitorial services, laundry and catering services, pest control services, insurance services, supply of food and accounting services and extending through long-term involvement in highly skilled subsectors like subsea installation, geophysical analysis and engineering.
The LCA was designed with the overarching goal that Guyana’s oil and gas industry can support an economy where small and medium-sized businesses can grow, thrive, and benefit from the country’s burgeoning oil and gas industry. The laws aim to ensure that companies operating in the country hire a certain percentage of local workers and use a certain percentage of local goods and services. These percentages are set to steadily increase as local workers and companies gain capacity and knowledge until Guyanese provide many services and fill most of the industry’s jobs.

OPTIMISATION
Tackling the question of transparency in another aspect, the President pointed to the systems in place which show that the national development priorities of the country are not state secrets.
Dr Ali then said: “Given the hand we were dealt with by the previous government, we are definitely optimising what we can achieve from the sector.”
While the discovery of oil was made under the PPP/C’s watch, it was under the APNU+AFC that the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) was signed.
Earlier this year, Jagdeo disclosed that monitoring and contract compliance will be among the major policy items for the country’s oil and gas sector in 2024.
He has maintained that the government remains committed to improving its policies to regulate the country growing oil and gas industry.
The Vice President told reporters that the government has already implemented several policies that were outlined in its manifesto.
These, according to Jagdeo, include: reforming the Natural Resource Fund, reforming the petroleum activities bill, local content legislation, process safety event (PSE) strengthening the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the environmental permits.
“We believe this year has to focus more on greater monitoring and contract compliance. So the new law would necessitate and clarify data flow between companies so we will now focus heavily on timeliness of data, the completeness of data, and the assessment of the data when it comes from the oil companies,” he said.