The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) today said that its Commissioner-General, Godfrey Statia will share details of the ExxonMobil agreement with his staff when necessary.
In a statement, the GRA was responding to a news item in yesterday’s Kaieteur News headlined `GRA officials `sailing’ on Exxon contract’.
The GRA says it is privy to such contractual arrangements. “However in keeping with the law this information is confidential. To maintain its confidentiality and avoid leakages, the Commissioner-General will only share such excerpts of the said agreement with relevant officers in the event that their duties require them being privy to such information in the execution of such duties”, the release said.
The GRA said that such a position takes into consideration a number of factors, chief among them, the sensitivity and confidentiality of the document and the level of caution that had to be imposed “as a result of persistent breaches of the Secrecy Oath at the Authority”. It said that the recent KN article is the latest such breach of confidentiality and further evidence of the need to exercise such diligence.
The GRA said it wished to state firmly that it “remains committed to fulfilling its obligations as one of the regulatory bodies for the rapidly emerging oil and gas sector in Guyana”.
It said that part of that commitment involves the imposition of rigid systems at the Authority to closely monitor companies that are engaged in exploration and extraction of oil offshore, in keeping with the contractual agreement between the Guyana Government and such oil exploration companies including ExxonMobil.
