The deadline for the submission of proposals to market Guyana’s oil has been extended to next Tuesday after the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) was forced to suspend its operations due to staff members testing positive for COVID-19.
“A decision has been taken, due to unforeseen circumstances, to extend the date of submission of the RFP [Request for Proposals] for these services from Friday 25th September 2020 to Tuesday September 29th 2020,” the Department of Energy stated in a note on its Facebook page.
When contacted, Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat confirmed the decision to Stabroek News. “Yes, it was extended because the Tender Board is closed due to COVID. A few staff members are positive,” he said.
Last month, the PPP/C government announced that it had scrapped the shortlist of 19 companies that had submitted proposals to sell Guyana’s portion of oil from the Liza-1 well and launched a new RFP, while omitting the prequalification process.
When the new RFP was announced it had most of the criteria set out in the first round of expressions of interest (EoIs) but omitted the clauses that stated that companies would be evaluated in accordance with the procedures set out in the submission of a technical EoI, evaluation of the EoI and creation of a shortlist and that only shortlisted companies would be invited to submit full technical and commercial proposals.
The Minister of Natural Resources had explained that the 19 shortlisted and the overall 34 companies that participated in the first process were free to resubmit proposals.
“They can resubmit. We have nothing against them. It is a different administration, we have more transparency in the process and had signaled before that it would be retendered,” he had said.
It was Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo who made the announcement that the new government would go to a retendering. He explained that the decision was made to give companies that had not submitted a proposal a chance to do so as some may have withheld their participation as the process had been launched by a caretaker government at the time.
Bharrat reiterated this position and he said that an independent team will be established to review the bids. “We will set up an independent team of professionals to review when the bids come in, not the Minister or Vice President…,” he said.
Guyana’s next lift, the Minister said, will be in mid-November and he explained that the evaluation process for the new tender “will take about six weeks”.
