Three years since it was first completed and submitted, followed by promises that it will be made public, government says that the IHS Markit audit of ExxonMobil’s US$460 million pre-contract costs is still being reviewed by the company.
“The report is being submitted for review and is in its final stages of approval,” Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat told the Sunday Stabroek when asked about the report.
It is about the sixth time over the two-year period that the PPP/C has been in office that he has given similar “final stages” responses.
The Natural Resources Minister did not explain why the review was initiated by ExxonMobil and whose approval has to be sought before it could be handed over to the Government of Guyana.
Back in February of this year, Bharrat had said that the report had been in its finalisation stage, so it remains unclear why some ten months after that statement, it is still being finalised, given that, by comparison, the entire audit of over US$7 billion in post-contract costs had a timeline of four months to be completed.
He would say again in late May that the report was being finalised, even as auditing of post-contract costs had begun.
Bharrat contended then that the IHS report was coming to completion and that the post-contract audit agreement had to be signed before the IHS one could be closed as there needed to be some reconciling of expenses. “It is being completed. This one had to be signed first because there are some things, expenses that had to be looked at…”
The IHS Markit audit will provide the first real insight into whether ExxonMobil has been making undue expense claims.
In the face of concerns that his administration has only paid lip service to transparency in its stewardship of the oil and gas sector, President Irfaan Ali had in August of this year said that government is building a dedicated website to publish all available information. He would later tell this newspaper in an interview in September that he would check on the status of the audit.
“I have to follow up where this is and will definitely communicate,” Ali had said.
The President has also said that a website dedicated to the oil and gas sector would be established for the public’s monitoring as his government had nothing to hide.
“I do not believe that we have been hiding anything as it relates to the oil and gas sector,” he further contended, as he claimed that “every piece of information that the government has, every discussion we have had… has been made public and shared with the public.”
It is unclear as to the status of the website.
However, there has been no word on the report submitted by IHS Markit on the audit of ExxonMobil’s US$460 million pre-contract costs, save for the Guyana Revenue Authority earlier this year saying it was completed but that the submission was bungled because of the form in which it was delivered.
