Dear Editor,
In responding to my letter with regard to the government seeking to renegotiate the Oil and Gas 2016 PSA Contract with ExxonMobil, Christopher Ram resorts to the lowest form of defence by attacking the messenger while ignoring the message, arguing that I do not speak with an independent voice as a Public Relations Consultant to the President. In fact, I was not asked, directed or expected to express my view on this matter and why, may I ask, is my defence of the government’s position any less valuable or legitimate than Ram’s representation of clients who pay him to represent them in or out of court? Further, I ask Ram to explain what my past political differences with Dr. and Mrs. Jagan have to do with the subject at hand, other than humbug on the part of Mr. Ram.
Christopher Ram has enthusiastically embraced the populist demand that the government, or, for that matter, any government in office, must force ExxonMobil, whether they like it or not, to renegotiate the Oil and Gas 2016 PSA Contract. Ram, of course, can do so knowing that the consequences to the country of any government following this course of action would not fall on his unelected shoulders.
Ram repeats ad nauseam that “the agreement itself provides for renegotiation, and Exxon cannot refuse to engage in good-faith discussions”. Really. The Contract requires that both parties must agree to renegotiation. As I have said in my letter, it matters not that just about every Guyanese is in agreement that the Exxon Contract is, to use President Ali’s own words, “a bad deal”. Bad deal or not, the Exxon Contract was entered into by the Government of Guyana and, regardless of which political party was in government, the obligation to honour it remains with the Government of Guyana.
Christopher Ram, nevertheless, would have the government force Exxon into arbitration, taking on a battery of Exxon’s well experienced lawyers in a court battle lasting over numerous years, with the risk of Exxon shutting down production in the interim, regardless of whether they are legally permitted to do so or not, and watch while a plethora of potential investors cancel their visit to Guyana and those that are here buy their tickets out of Guyana.
Christopher Ram is big on the losses Guyana suffers from failure to renegotiate the Contract but, seems in ignorance, as Mr. Sanjeev Datadin points out in his letter on the subject, that if Exxon is forced to renegotiate the Contract, the Government of Guyana “must pay directly to Exxon the full value by which their financial gain is reduced by the new contract”.
As Professor, Dr. Stanley A.V. Paul so correctly points out in his letter in yesterday’s Stabroek News (7th January, 2025) coinciding with Ram’s, “the suggested course of aggressive renegotiations is a high-stakes gamble that could imperil Guyana’s economic stability, investor confidence and long-term growth trajectory”. He goes on to point out that “to suggest renegotiation without ExxonMobil’s willingness reduces the process to an exercise in coercion rather than dialogue. Negotiation by definition presupposes mutual interest. If ExxonMobil remains disinclined to revisit the existing terms, then any attempt to impose revisions would be seen, not as negotiation, but as an act of unilateral economic aggression”. Precisely, but this is where Mr. Ram, who, as I have said would bear no consequences, wants to take our government and our country.
Another letter from a Mike Persaud, I don’t know him, also prefers to attack the messenger (me) rather than the message. He writes in sheer ignorance of the reality of the threat from Venezuela, which he calls “some saber-rattling”.
Stabroek News has, in fact, published two Editorials pointing out the very real and present danger of Venezuela’s recent activities on our border, particularly the construction of a bridge that unlawfully connects Venezuela’s mainland to the territory of Guyana on Ankoko Island. A bridge which can carry military vehicles and light tanks.
Maduro’s unelected regime has built this bridge with obviously no good intention towards our country. By building this bridge, the Venezuelan government is in complete violation of all of the international agreements it has signed on to with regard to refraining from any hostile action towards Guyana, both the ICJ and the Declaration of Argyle, but, Persaud chooses to ignore this and describes as “nonsensical”, the need for Guyana to rely upon its friends and allies to protect us and to ensure that we do nothing to undermine those friendships and alliances.
Surely, too, Persaud must know, since he presumes to express an opinion on the subject, that the reason that the Maduro regime aggressively pursues its illegitimate claim to the Essequibo region is not because of the land but the fact that the possession of it gives legitimate access to the oil offshore which we are now with Exxon developing.
I end by asking a simple question of all of the protagonists for forcing renegotiating the Oil and Gas Contract with Exxon regardless of the consequences, that in spite of it being hugely advantageous to Exxon, would they prefer that we had never entered into any contract with Exxon and the oil instead remained untouched, unexploited, entirely our own, under the ground and of no earthly use at all?
Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento
