Today’s column continues a review of the Esso/Hess/Nexen Petroleum Agreement signed on June 27, 2016 and publicly released by the Government of Guyana on December 29, 2017. Last week’s column noted a number of missing parts of the Agreement as well as what the Agreement refers to as a Bridging Deed. That Deed is defined in Article 1 as a separate Agreement signed “on or around the June 27, 2016”, to replace the 1999 Agreement and the 1999 Petroleum Prospecting Licence. Readers will recall that then President Janet Jagan signed the 1999 Agreement in violation of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Act (the Act) to the extent that the company (Esso) was granted approximately six hundred blocks instead of the sixty blocks permitted by law.
The 1999 Agreement and Prospecting Licence appear to have been contained in a single package and included a full description of the blocks and a map of the area allotted to the oil company. The 2016 Agreement merely states that on that date Minister Trotman granted a Petroleum Prospecting Licence for an initial period of four years! In other words, the whole idea of Mr. Trotman was to pretend that the 1999 Agreement never existed. Trotman has to be given credit – this takes legal gymnastics to a completely new level.