Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo made some comments at his weekly press conference on Thursday in relation to Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman’s error with the Exxon deal and what it means for Guyana.
Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman.
Jagdeo said that Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman screwed up and shafted Guyana due to the fact that he did not look to ensure that ring fencing provisions were included before signing the Exxon deal.
He said that Trotman claimed that he was advised by GGMC.
“Trotman’s comment about blaming the GGMC for not ring fencing now isn’t this pathetic? As a minister after all this time, you screwed up the negotiation of the Exxon Mobil contract; you shafted the country.”
“We called on the government to hire the best skills in the world to be at the table. You could potentially have cost this country billions of US dollars through your inept negotiations. That is what we get today and it passes on.”
He went on to say that Guyana will have to live with that forever. The opposition leader quoted Trotman’s exact words where he said “My only comment is that as a non-technical person, I was not the one to negotiate the contract.”
According to an article in another section of the media, Minister Trotman claimed that he was absolving himself from any responsibility for not expressing that the lack of ring fencing provisions in the Exxon contract could affect the country’s revenue that it will earn from the oil industry.
Government first expressed its concern over the lack of this provision during a delegation visit by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) earlier this month.
Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo.
“My only comment is that as a non-technical person, I was not the one to negotiate the contract, and that, at all material time, I acted on the advice and direction of the GGMC,” Trotman told Stabroek News.
Trotman went on to say, “How could I see something as an indictment on myself if I didn’t draft it? I relied on the officers at GGMC at all times and was advised when the agreement was ready for signature.”
The IMF’s mission’s Concluding Statement had said that “authorities indicated their concerns that the absence of a ring-fencing arrangement in the Stabroek Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) could potentially affect the projected flow of government oil revenues.
At one time Trotman described the new PSA as a “tweaking” of the earlier one but the way he handled things had come under serious criticism for not addressing issues such as ring fencing.
According to the said article, after the GGMC officials returned to Guyana and presented the report, they never heard of or saw the renegotiated contract until it was ready for signature in June 2016. After its completion, they were not asked for further input.