Dear Editor,
I have long considered former President Mr. Samuel Hinds among the less than a handful of politicians of the past forty years who can be described as honest and decent. He now admits to urging then President Janet Jagan to “put out a welcome mat and be at our most seductive”, seeming to claim part credit for the infamous Esso Petroleum Agreement of 1999. That Agreement signed away part of our maritime zone which is larger than the whole of Guyana and for a period of potentially forty years – ten years to carry out exploration activities and thirty years for production activities. Worse, it guaranteed to Esso the suspension of relevant legislative powers of the National Assembly not only for the forty years but the additional seventeen years between 1999 and 2016, “legalised” by the APNU+AFC Coalition by way of a so-called Bridging Deed, without any comment from Mr. Sam Hinds or the PPP/C. That goes beyond seduction. It is self-colonisation.
My hope of Mr. Hinds was that the leisure of retirement and vast presidential and parliamentary pay and benefits would lead to a sober and fact-based reflection of his contribution, both positive and negative, to where Guyana now is. I did not think that expecting Mr. Hinds to read the Hansard on the Second and Third Readings of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Bill of 1986 would be too much. Or the suggestion that he should pay attention to the contributions of Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Comrades Eusi Kwayana and Reepu Daman Persaud, as they were then called.
Jagan called for a coherent energy policy. After twenty-four years in Government, the PPP/C still has none: unless, “drill baby, drill” is that policy. Jagan described the PNC as a “client of the USA” and of putting the country’s independence and energy policies in the hands of the multinationals. Yet, it was his wife Janet Jagan who started what he wrongly accused the P.N.C of doing. It was not until 2016 that the PNC in any of its forms, signed a Petroleum Agreement as we know it. If the truth be told, the PPP/C has been far more generous, or “seductive” (to use Hinds’ choice word), to oil companies than the PNC ever was.
In the debate, Jagan described the Bill as a “blank cheque”, allowing foreign oil companies “to write their own tax laws”. The PPP/C has had twenty-four years to revoke the blank cheque but with each new production licence allows its perpetuation. Jagan raised the question of tax holidays which were then limited to five years. The PPP/C went further – it agreed to pay the taxes of the oil companies! Jagan spoke of the threat to our Independence. Yet, it was Ramotar and Robert Persaud MBA, who in a 2012 Model Petroleum Agreement reinforced the overriding of the Legislative powers of the National Assembly. Jagan spoke of ceding control of our resources to “international sharks” and for equity participation. Yet, the PPP/C has consistently waived Guyana’s right to ownership participation in oil ventures, which is permitted in the same Bill which he was famously discrediting but which the PPP/C has now left intact for 24 years.
This is not meant to be a defence of the APNU and the 2016 Agreement. Then Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman stupidly applied a pre-discovery model Agreement to a post-discovery find. Common sense should suggest otherwise, that the discovery demanded a new and different Agreement. Yet, the PPP/C oil czar Robert Persaud spent the entire five years of the APNU stewardship not only silent on the 2016 Agreement but supportive of and supporting the unmitigated disaster that Trotman was.
The PPP/C under Bharrat Jagdeo advocated a Low Carbon Development Strategy. Now Sam Hinds writes dismissively of those who cite the Constitution in calling for the prevention of pollution and ecological degradation and the promotion of conservation. I weep that the idea of development advocated by Bishop Edghill was not a singular opinion, but rather policy of the PPP/C. That Hinds is part of this intellectual leadership is enough to make me wonder whether his politics, like that of his colleagues, is merely transactional and opportunistic, devoid of principles and a real commitment to Guyana. And that the name of founder-leader Dr. Cheddi Jagan is now only to be resurrected to enchant supporters on convenient occasions.
In making the unfounded claim of expenditures/investments of about USD ten billion in the search for oil, Mr. Hinds, a geologist by training, is using public space either to misinform or to display a complete unfamiliarity with the nature, structure and financing of the oil industry. The facts do not support this oft-repeated but still mythical nonsense.
Let us use the oil companies own figures. Some six months after the discovery of oil, Exxon, Hess and CNOOC/Nexen, its partners in the Stabroek Block, claimed in the Petroleum Agreement, spending of only US$460 million as at December 31, 2015. Not only is this figure less than one-twentieth of the “about USD ten billion” quoted by Mr. Hinds, but the US$460 million itself was close to one hundred million US Dollars more than the figures disclosed in the separate financial statements of the three companies. Mr. Hinds would know that I challenged the oil companies’ number of US$460 million and that they have failed to rebut that number.
In this important policy on a sector likely to be dominant for the next few decades, the public expect to hear from Mr. Hinds whether his urging that Guyana put out a welcome mat and be at our most seductive to Esso, also extends to suspension of any parliamentary powers over the oil companies, unanswered questions about their accounts, subordinating Guyana’s energy policy to the boardrooms of the oil companies and disregard of the laws of the country.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
