A consortium of local accounting and auditing firms has expressed concern that after submitting a bid to audit cost oil only one firm has been listed by the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board as having submitted a bid.
“A consortium of firms submitted [a tender] but we see it reported and stated on the website of NPTAB as only one company,” a representative of the consortium told Stabroek News yesterday.
The consortium – RHVE – consists of the firms Ram and McRae; Haynes and Ramdihal; Vitality Consulting and Eclisar Financial & Professional Services (EFP).
When the tenders for the Ministry of Natural Resources’ project – consultancy services for cost recovery audit validation of the Government of Guyana’s profit oil share – were opened last Tuesday, it was stated that only Eclisar Financial & Professional Services (EFP) had submitted a tender, according to NPTAB records.
That bid was pegged at $340.7 million.
RHVE states that it responded to a request for proposals for the project and when it submitted its tender document the cover letter had all of the companies listed.
Stabroek News yesterday reached out to NPTAB for comment but calls to Chairman Tarachand Balgobin went unanswered.
This newspaper had, since last week when the bid was announced, tried contacting head of Eclisar but calls to his number and the mobile and land lines listed for the company have also gone unanswered.
It is unclear what would be the way forward given that objections to tenders are supposed to be made at the time of opening.
On the matter of cost recovery auditing from 2017 to 2020, Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat had stated during the 2022 Budget debate and in a written response that monies for this project had been appropriated this year and to the tune of some US$250,000 ($52m).
In November last year, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo announced that ExxonMobil’s post-2017 expenditure for the Liza-1 and Liza-2 wells would not be audited as government was not able to select a strong local group to undertake it. This statement was at odds with the fact that the government had advertised this year for foreign firms.
The comments had seen a string of criticisms from the public with many emphasising the need for the sums to be professionally scrutinised. It was compounded by the fact that it was over one year since the audit of the US$460 million by United Kingdom firm IHS Markit. That report is yet to be seen.
Noted too was that the statutory two-year period for the 2017-2019 auditing had expired and there was a concern that the company might object to its books being audited after the contracted time had elapsed.
But government has stressed that the auditing of the over US$9 billion sum can still be undertaken and as such there is no need to request an extension from ExxonMobil. Former APNU+AFC minister, David Patterson, had questioned if the Ministry of Natural Resources or any other agency with oversight of the oil & gas sector had approached ExxonMobil for an extension of the deadline for auditing the expenses.
The Minister of Natural Resources had offered assurances. “We have a commitment from Exxon. There is no such [objection], they are not against us doing it [later],” Bharrat had stated.
ExxonMobil has told this newspaper that it is confident of its bookkeeping matters and transparency of the company. It added that it has never shied away from audit requests and that it submits periodic reports on its spending to a number of government agencies here.
“ExxonMobil Guyana considers audits a normal part of our operations and cooperates with the government so it can fulfill its obligations. We are fully transparent with the Government on our budgets and cost banks for each block and have implemented extensive cost controls across our business in line with our contracts and the laws of the country,” ExxonMobil spokesperson Janelle Persaud had said in response to questions from Stabroek News.
“Audits are just one part of a comprehensive framework of controls established by the government. These include setting annual budgets for each block we operate which are reviewed by the Ministry of Natural Resources, and reporting actual spend against these on a monthly basis to the Ministry. We also steward and report costs for each project that is approved and each well that we drill,” she added.
The latest update on the auditing was given by Bharrat who said that government was in discussions with local auditors so as to have them be a part of the process, in keeping with local content initiatives here.
