Apart from the perplexing and injurious unwillingness of the PPP/C Government to bring ExxonMobil and company back to the negotiating table to staunch the haemorrhaging of money due to Guyana and its people, it is also failing on accountability for the auditing of the massive expenses claimed by the Stabroek Block venturers.
Members of the public need to understand why this auditing is crucial and why the government and its agencies must be held fully accountable. For every one hundred barrels of oil that ExxonMobil produces it can claim as many as 75 barrels as expenses. If its claims are unjustified or erroneous, half of that number of improperly claimed barrels should be returned to Guyana as profit. It already owes this country around US$107m based on the findings of the first audit of oil expenses by UK firm IHS Markit.
However, just as derelict as the government has been in relation to the renegotiation of the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) it has been complicit in enabling questionable auditing of expenses and not prosecuting Guyana’s claims aggressively.
It was under the APNU+AFC administration that the contract for the auditing of US$1.67b in pre-contract expenses was awarded to IHS Markit. Had it been the PPP/C government that award might never have been made. The final version of the IHS report after reconciliations was submitted to the PPP/C government in March 2021. That report remained hidden for two years from public view until the April 2, 2023 Sunday Stabroek published the findings. Why did the PPP/C Government not release this report immediately?
Among the major findings in the audit report was that 12.8% of the US$1.67b expenses claimed by ExxonMobil and its partners could be disputed by the Guyana Government. The percentage that can be queried translates to US$214.4m. To cut a long story short. This matter is still unsettled, smokescreens have been thrown up by both the government and ExxonMobil. Moreover, this IHS Markit audit was the subject of a clandestine attempt at the Ministry of Natural Resources between a senior employee and ExxonMobil to cut the outstanding figure to near zero, evidence again of how this country’s revenues are at risk.
Then in November of 2022, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo stunningly announced that ExxonMobil’s post-2017 expenditure for the Liza-1 and Liza-2 wells – US$7.435b – would not be audited as government was not able to select a “strong local group” to undertake it. This despite the fact that the PPP/C government had been in office for more than two years and the matter was important enough that a foreign auditor be found if a local consortium was not available. Evidence yet again of a predisposition to allow ExxonMobil to escape with any and everything.
Mr Jagdeo’s comments resulted in strong criticisms from the public with many emphasising the need for the sums to be professionally scrutinised. The criticisms were compounded by the fact that the findings of the IHS Markit audit were still to be disclosed. To cut another long story short, on May 24, 2022, nearly 22 months after it took office, the PPP/C Government signed a deal with the local consortium VHE Consulting to audit US$7.435b in expenses claimed.
The final VHE Consulting report was submitted to the government in September 2022 and again it was only on Stabroek News’ reporting on the findings on October 15, 2023 that the report eventually became public. The VHE report has been severely criticized. Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran said in a column in this newspaper: “… the report by VHE Consulting on the audit of the Cost Recovery Statement for the period 2018-2020 lacks basic structure, rendering it difficult for the average reader to go through the report to ascertain what the findings and conclusions are.
“The combined report, comprising 190 pages, is too long and unwieldy. There is a significant amount of unnecessary quoting from the PSA (Production Sharing Agreement), and the report is badly in need of editing to ensure conciseness and user friendliness. Additionally, the auditors had stated that the documentation and process of transferring materials out of inventory could not be examined but gave no reasons why this was so. This is a major shortcoming of the audit since the value of materials issued from inventory to production over the period under review would have constituted a significant portion of the total amount shown in the Cost Recovery Statement”.
Mr Goolsarran added that the amounts queried by VHE Consulting totalled US$65.194 million, representing 0.88 percent of the total expenditure of US$7.435 billion shown in the Cost Recovery Statement. However, Exxon’s subsidiary accepted only US$10.319 million which was credited back to the Statement, leaving an amount of US$54.874 million unresolved.
Now, more than a year later, the public remains in the dark as to whether the VHE Consulting report is acceptable to the state, whether the auditors had done a proper job and whether the audit cycle has been closed. The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Guyana Revenue Authority have been silent on the matter.
Lo and behold, even though there has been no definitive declaration on the quality of the VHE Consulting report on the US$7.435b in expenses, a new contract has been awarded to it by an Evaluation Committee of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB). How is this possible when the Evaluation Committee of the NPTAB is not privy to the State’s final position on the audit and the performance of VHE Consulting? This here again is evidence that the government’s procurement system is riddled with huge potholes which allow certain contractors to be favoured and usually to the detriment of the country.
Furthermore, VHE Consulting did not meet one of the stated criteria for the award of the contract. According to the advertisement, the bidding firm, along with its partners (local and foreign) combined, must have completed at least three similar assignments during the past seven years. VHE Consulting would not have met this requirement yet it has been awarded the contract.
Since the NPTAB could not have been aware of the final outcome of the audit – as the public has no knowledge of it – it couldn’t reasonably have approved the VHE Consulting proposal under any circumstance. The audit should have gone to whichever foreign auditing body submitted a satisfactory proposal in compliance with the requirements that had been established for the award.
The government’s handling of the auditing of oil expenses stretching from when the IHS Markit audit report was submitted in March 2021 to this month’s hiring of VHE Consulting for the third audit exposes it as not acting in the best interest of the country. The final result of the second audit must be published immediately, if completed, and if necessary the decision on the third audit should be reviewed and placed on hold.