Dear Editor

ON July 1, Kaieteur News penned an editorial based on Christopher Ram’s poorly reasoned appeal for a Petroleum Commission to be established in Guyana. Ram’s reasoning, as reflected in the editorial, is based on a conspiracy theory that ExxonMobil is engaged in financial espionage against the government and people of Guyana and our national institutions are being duped or complicit. Ram goes further and predicts that when oil runs out in 2057 the people of Guyana will have nothing to show for it.

The claim is hogwash and has no bearing in reality. We are almost at the five-year mark since the PPP/C took office, and from the overwhelming empirical data at the disposal of the public, there is a great deal to show by way of the immense transformation that has and is taking place in Guyana. For the first time in my life, we can begin to dream, and to dream requires peace of mind, after the horrific nightmare that the PNC and now APNU and AFC have subjected us to. No one wants to go backwards, nor should we be held back.

But let’s look at Ram’s plans to prevent what he calls ExxonMobil’s “classic profit manipulation” scheme. Ram’s panacea is a Petroleum Commission. It is hubris to assume that the competent men and women in Guyana and ExxonMobil shareholders are blind, deaf and dumb to allegations of highway robbery of ExxonMobil. The assumption that Ram makes is that nobody is as good with numbers as he is.

Ram does not like the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), no one does, except the folks in APNU+AFC that signed it. However, Ram can at least credit the PPP/C administration for strengthening its auditing and monitoring capabilities. Ram discards the formidable efforts of the Ministry of Natural Resources to conduct rigorous audits of oil company expenses, introduce oversight and increase transparency and accountability in compliance with international standards, all of which will never be good enough for him.

Ram’s insistence that only a petroleum commission can ensure transparency and accountability deliberately ignores the role of the National Assembly, which conducts hearings and can summon officials for questioning at the drop of a hat. He ignores the role of the Auditor General’s Office in auditing public accounts, including those related to the oil sector. He ignores the Natural Resources Fund’s (NRF) statutory reporting and oversight mechanisms. Combined, these institutions have opened the windows to a much greater level of transparency and accountability than we have had in Guyana.

Ram’s call for an independent Petroleum Commission might sound appealing, music perhaps to the ears of Lall, but if he were to look at the experience of long-time oil-producing nations, they would see that petroleum commissions are rare.

Nigeria has the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), but that has hardly stemmed the tide of corruption in that country, and it always ranks extremely low on the United Nations corruption indexes.

How about Norway, touted as a model for oil sector governance? It does not have a “petroleum commission.” Like Guyana, it depends on government ministries and agencies, its Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, coupled with strong parliamentary oversight, to manage its oil revenues.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Canada and the United States typically regulate their oil sectors through their ministries, specialised agencies and independent regulatory authorities, just like Guyana under the PPP/C administration.

Sincerely
Nazim Baksh