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Linkages between ExxonMobil, State contractors should be under microscope – petroleum advisor
Finding contractors or independent experts without ties to major oil companies is a dilemma all governments of producing nations face.
But when a close relationship has been identified between an oil company and a firm contracted to work on the State’s behalf, then every effort should be made to p
Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment (CCSI), Tom Mitro
lace it under the microscope says Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment (CCSI), Tom Mitro.
This statement by the International Petroleum Consultant was made on the heels of a story Kaieteur News published recently on the World Bank, which has given its approval for several ExxonMobil-linked contractors to win projects funded by a US$20M loan it gave to Guyana.
The most controversial award to date has been a contract to an international law firm, Hunton, Andrews Kurth, to review Guyana’s archaic laws even though this firm enjoys a 40-year-old relationship with ExxonMobil.
There have been numerous calls locally and internationally for this and other awards to be investigated for possible conflict of interest.
In an invited comment, Mitro told Kaieteur News that any true expert has probably at one time or another, worked directly for an oil company or worked for a consulting company that has most of their business derived from the oil industry.
Elaborating further, the advisor said, “There are only a very small number of law firms and consultants that will not work for oil companies and specifically focus on governments and national oil companies. One I am familiar with is the Curtis, Mallet-Prevost law firm based in New York. I also sometimes do work with a consulting company called Resources For Development based in Ottawa that focuses entirely on working for governments, national companies and NGO’s and does not do work for oil companies…”
Mitro added, “Even then, some of their individual consultants would have worked for oil companies in the past …That is one reason why many governments end up relying on organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or institutes like CCSI for their advice.”
The Senior Fellow at CCSI said that one of the problems those organizations however, is that they often do not have the time to be fully dedicated or have direct hands-on experience working in the industry.
Mitro said that they play a mostly general advisory role and tend to be more focused on issuing reports rather than working on a day-to-day basis in a specific role.
Considering this, Mitro said the government is therefore faced with the dilemma of relying on one of these organizations or going with commercial entities that work all the time with oil companies and have the potential for conflict of interest.
Mitro categorically stated that governments need to carefully set out the scope of work and expectations in the contract, and reinforce that they expect companies to potentially play and have the serial role in all this.
“They may even need to disqualify certain individuals who work for those firms if they are perceived to have too close of a tie to the companies they will be monitoring,” expressed the advisor.
Overall, he stressed that care must be taken to monitor all close ties which may work against the interest of the State and its people.
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