Vickram Bharrat
June 13 ,2020
More than four months after deciding to go back to tendering to find a marketer for Guyana’s oil, the government is silent on if a firm has been selected.
Although the Ministry of Natural Resources on Friday formally announced that it had received payment for this country’s sixth oil lift, in keeping with its commitment to “transparency and accountability,” it has repeatedly failed to fulfill commitments to shed light on the outcome of the process to select a marketer and the current sales regime being used for this country’s oil lifts.
In February, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had announced that the government believed that a “nonsensical” inclusion for evaluation of tender , set by the former APNU+AFC administration as part of the criteria for bidders wanting to market Guyana’s oil, led to 28 of 29 companies being deemed non-responsive. At that time he said that government was considering the removal of the criteria and asking all companies that submitted proposals to resubmit their documents.
However, nothing has been said on what has been done since then and if the idea mentioned by Jagdeo was pursued. No notice to this effect was seen by this newspaper in print or other media.
Last month, Jagdeo was asked for an update and said that while he did not have the information at hand, he would ask the Ministry of Natural Resources to make it available and to post the information on its website for easy access.
Since then, this newspaper has been repeatedly seeking an update but to no avail.
Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat was contacted several times. On one occasion he said he would provide the information later on the same day. On another occasion he said that he was at Cabinet. On yet another occasion he said he would ask his “PR guys” to prepare a response. Contacted last Friday, he said he would “look into it”.
When the ministry’s Public Relations Officer Stephon Gabriel was contacted about the minister’s reply, he did not give any information but said that he was assuring that “we will update once the reviews and analysis have been completed”
Told of this response and if that was all that would be said on the matter, Bharrat repeated, “We will keep you updated”.
While in opposition the PPP/C had been heavily critical of the former APNU+AFC’s administration handling of issues relating to the oil and gas sector and secrecy on decisions made in the sector, which is this country’s biggest foreign exchange and income earner.
When it took office last year, the PPP/C had announced that it had scrapped the shortlist of 19 prospective marketers from the 34 that had participated in the first process under the APNU+AFC government in April 2020, while the country was in the middle of a political crisis and awaiting results of the March 2 general elections. The process the PPP/C chose saw the omission of a prequalification phase.
Twenty-nine companies had responded to that tender and the nation awaited word on which of them would market this country’s oil from this year.
Government has not said when or if this country has had its seventh lift already but on Friday said that the monies for the sixth lift was deposited into a US account set aside for the Natural Resource Fund. “On April 13, 2021, 998,645 barrels of oil were lifted from Liza Destiny with a value of US$ 62,617,616.23,” it said, while adding that to date a total of 6,008,442 barrels of oil has earned Guyana US$309,160,278.23. Inclusive of royalties, the total in the Natural Resources Fund Account now stands at US$344.155 million, it further said.