[ad_1]
Vikram Bharat boasts: ‘Guyana’s oil industry is one of the best managed in the world’
Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat
– Despite minimal royalty rates, no taxes on oil companies, no segregation and lack of independent oversight
Kaieteur News – Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat has defended the management of Guyana’s oil industry, claiming it is one of the best managed in the world.
Minister Barratt stressed at a press conference on Wednesday that “now speaking about the oil and gas industry, I would say that from the outset, some people may not agree, but when you look at it from a neutral perspective, we see that Guyana’s oil and gas industry is one of the best managed oil and gas industries in the world.”
The Minister stressed that transparency and accountability are important pillars of Guyana’s petroleum industry management. He also noted that it is rare for any oil producing country to have its chief decision maker (Guyana’s Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo) engage with the public and the media through weekly press conferences. Bharrat said: “We did a quick check and how many oil producing countries in the world would have the country’s Vice President (the main decision maker in the oil and gas industry) speaking on the industry every week of the year…” He continued: “But every week, our country’s chief decision maker, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, speaks on the industry and gives the media and others the opportunity to ask questions about the industry.”
Minister Bharat stressed the government’s commitment to transparency, noting that information is regularly shared through various channels, including websites and press releases.
Bharrat Jagdeo, Vice President and chief oil and gas policymaker for Guyana
“The management of the oil and gas industry has nothing to hide,” he affirmed, adding that few other countries’ leaders discuss the oil and gas industry as frequently as Guyana’s, saying that Guyana’s leaders “are very few countries that do that and the countries that really do that, they do it 10 times a year.”
To further prove his point, the Minister pointed to the National Resource Fund (NRF) as evidence of the PPP government’s commitment to transparency and accountability in the sector. “Take the NRF as an example, anyone around the world can check how much money is in the NRF,” he said. He explained that there are only two ways to extract money from the NRF, one is through the national budget, which must be debated and approved by the National Assembly, and the other is in the event of a national disaster, which also requires parliamentary approval.
Referring to criticism levelled at the industry and the management of its revenues, Bharat retorted: “The National Relief Fund Act has put in place strong measures to ensure proper accountability and transparency and let you know how much money is flowing into the fund.”
Bharat attributed the success of Guyana’s oil industry to the lessons learned from other countries. “It’s because we have learned from the mistakes of other oil producing countries; it’s because we have the advantage of learning from other models around the world because we started late,” he continued. “We have the advantage of learning from the models that failed and the models that succeeded, and we have learned from different models to create the model that works best for Guyana,” the Minister said. In addition, the Minister was proud to say that Guyana is now recognized as a role model for other countries. “Guyana is one of the newest oil producing countries in the world today and it is being used as a model country,” he said. Minister Bharat referred to the recent visit of Namibian Minister of Energy Tom Alweendo, who led a delegation to Guyana to learn from the model in the hope of applying it to their emerging oil industry.
Despite Bharat’s boasts, Guyana’s oil contract with ExxonMobil and the management of the industry have been widely criticized globally. Earlier this year, international finance expert Tom Sanzillo told CNBC, the world’s leading business and financial news network, that the ExxonMobil deal was one-sided. “Because ExxonMobil doesn’t pay taxes, they don’t provide the insurance that they should, and ExxonMobil has a special agreement with ExxonMobil to maximize profits, ExxonMobil gets the profits first and Guyana gets the profits later.” While the Guyana government acknowledged that the deal with ExxonMobil was heavily biased in favor of the company, it refused to ask for a renegotiation. The government’s position is that asking for changes to unfair terms would undermine investor confidence and damage the country’s reputation on the global stage. The government insists that Guyana must work with the resources it has.
Related
[ad_2]
Source link
