Dear Editor,
I have read with great interest the statement on oil revenues made by Minister of Natural Resources Hon. Raphael Trotman outlining the future oil revenue sharing agreement, it raised a question that I would like to use your forum to ask publicly.
ExxonMobil is allowed to recover expenditure as part of the contract, this is easily understood. What is not clear is exactly what expenditure, is it the expenditure to the point of discovery? Do we have a figure of how much it cost ExxonMobil to discover the Liza field well and is that the amount to be recovered by ExxonMobil or is it that we will have to repay all of ExxonMobil’s subsequent costs as they continue to explore?
My concern is that should the latter be the case, then ExxonMobil is exploring for oil on our dime, a great arrangement when we had no proven reserves, not so great now that we have a known quantity of reserves.
Guyana would be best served in my opinion by the formula of it cost X dollars to discover oil in Liza and that is what you repay from the production of Liza, and not “we (ExxonMobil) have spent, X(LIZA)+Y+Z to explore for oil and will expect to recover those costs before profit sharing with Guyana commences”.
I do hope to receive clarity on this issue from either ExxonMobil or the Ministry of Natural Resources, confidential agreements notwithstanding.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Singh
