Law expressly prohibited Trotman’s renewal of Stabroek licence – Ram
The Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act sets out definitive conditions for the award of blocks. Attorney-at-law, Christopher Ram, who has perused the Bridging Deed and studied the conditions under which the 2016 licence was awarded to ExxonMobil, has ascertained that Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, had no legal authority to award that Block.
Attorney-at-Law Christopher Ram
In fact, in the Thursday last edition of his Stabroek New column ‘The road to first oil’, Ram informed the public that the Act expressly prohibited Trotman’s award of the licence.
Ram drew attention to Section 21(2) of the Act, which states, “A petroleum prospecting licence shall not be granted to an applicant in respect of a block which is, at the time the application for the grant of the licence is made, comprised in a licence already granted.”
The provision describes the very 2016 signing of the Stabroek Block award by Trotman, in explicit language.
Ram stated in his column, “It is clear, then, that no amount of legal gymnastics could circumvent this express provision prohibiting a second bite of the cherry” – the cherry being the entire 6.6 million-acre Block awarded by former President Janet Jagan in 1999.
The Attorney posited that the Government is faced with a dilemma whereby, if it argues that the 1999 prospecting licence didn’t expire, Section 21 (2) applies; and if it argues that the licence did expire, as indicated in Attachment ‘A’ of the Bridging Deed, then the Government must clear two hurdles.
“The first is that its purported Relinquishment is meaningless since under Section 28 of the Act, relinquishment is only permissible ‘at any time when the licence is in force’.”
“The second is that Attachment ‘A’ to the Bridging Deed refers to the ‘expired Stabroek Licence Area’.”
In that case, Ram posited, the Deed would be of no effect, since the 2016 agreement could not be linked to “a dead anything”.
He continued that, in likening the legally questionable bridging deed unto a ‘savings clause’, Trotman may not have considered that the permission granted by such a provision would have to exist in some legislation or higher document, not in a document of lesser status.
In a previous iteration of his column, Ram also pointed to another aspect of the Act, Section 10, which the Bridging Deed, leaked to the media, seeks to ground itself in.
The Deed states, “Pursuant to Section 10 of the Act, the Minister has entered into this Deed together with the Contractor parties to set out the process whereby the 1999 License and the 1999 Petroleum Agreement will be replaced by a new petroleum prospecting licence and petroleum agreement in respect of the Contract Area.”
Kaieteur News has perused the Act, which shows no mention of a Deed. Ram explained this, writing that “[it] gives the Minister no power to enter into any Deed and certainly not one to breathe life into an expiring agreement”.
The Section states that the Minister is granted the power to enter into an agreement “not inconsistent with the Act” i.e. the four specified matters, namely the granting of a licence, the conditions attaching thereto, the procedure to be followed in exercising any discretion granted to him under the Act and any matter incidental thereto.
The lawyer hopes Minister Trotman would explain how Section 10 of the Act gives him the “supernatural” power to revive a “dead” agreement.