Dear Editor,
The objective for awarding oil blocks is to generate the maximum oil revenue (money) over the long-term for the benefit of the whole country. We benefit from the sensible spending of oil revenue to improve quality of life and to create meaningful jobs. We also benefit by the saving of part of the oil revenue for our children and grandchildren. Hence we need to focus on getting the maximum amount of money for our oil (e.g. by re-negotiating unfair contracts, by rescinding fraudulent contracts, etc).
The country does not benefit when a few well-connected people get oil blocks and become rich. For example, the country does not benefit when say twenty well connected Guyanese get a couple million US$ in the bank, a couple Land Cruisers, and acquire some properties in Miami and Long Island. This does nothing to help the country and its people.
Blocks must only be awarded via transparent competitive auctions, and to the biggest and best of the international oil companies who have the decades of experience and billions of US$ of assets to work offshore Guyana. Also, no Guyanese can legitimately “partner” with any of the major oil companies.
The guidelines mentioned above pretty much disqualify all Guyanese applications for oil blocks. But this is alright, this is not a problem. Disqualifying the unqualified is a good thing.
With regard to the recent news that Mr Eric Phillips and others applied for an oil block in 2016. No Guyanese should be applying for Block C, or any oil block. Then there is the additional issue that Mr Phillips started working at SARA in 2017, after he applied for the oil block in 2016. Hopefully he recognised the inappropriateness of his application after he started at SARA in 2017, or during his work on the Canje/Kaieteur issue in 2019. Hopefully his priority is now to protect the current investigation by SARA, and there should be a few options he can consider with respect to his old application or even with respect to his various responsibilities at SARA. Please note I believe there is already sufficient information in the public domain to justify rescinding the Canje and Kaieteur awards.
Although it is good that we now know about this application for an oil block, we also need to recognise that the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and GGMC were key players in awarding oil blocks to completely inappropriate companies. For example, the award of the Canje and Kaieteur Blocks in 2015. Also, why did MNR/GGMC entertain the many applications from Guyanese for Block C in 2016? The officials at GGMC knew these Guyanese could do nothing with the blocks, and would only flip the blocks, and thereby defraud the country. GGMC should have rejected all the applications at the time, and should have educated the applicants.
It sounds like we need to shine a big bright light on MNR/GGMC, and I hope the SARA investigation will do just that.
Yours faithfully,
Jan Mangal
