Nation without monthly oil production reports – Ram

Jan 21, 2021 News

Attorney-at-Law, Christopher Ram.

Kaieteur News – Thirteen months into oil production, the nation should be receiving monthly updates on the status of oil production in the Stabroek Block, and other details. ExxonMobil is mandated to report this information to the government, but Guyana does not know what the government knows.
These and other comments were shared by attorney-at-law and anti-corruption advocate, Christopher Ram, during Kaieteur Radio’s – The Glenn Lall Show, on Monday night.
He said that the government should have a monthly production report detailing the quantity of crude oil produced, as well as natural gas.
This is because the agreement signed with ExxonMobil, Hess and CNOOC for the Stabroek Block arrangements requires full disclosures on operations therein.
“The government would have received by now at least 11 [of the monthly production] statements,” Ram said.
“[But] we are not being told any of these things… We don’t know what the government knows.”
Ram noted that the lack of monthly production statements from the government is part of a wider issue of information, which should be shared with the public being kept under wraps.
This applied to the discourse on Monday night, during which Kaieteur News publisher Glenn Lall and Ram were discussing the gas-to-shore project. Concerns about a potential oversupply of natural gas in the future are what led Ram to point out that the public should receive regular reports of how much associated gas is coming up from the Liza well.
Historically, public disclosures of documents and information related to the petroleum industry have come after sustained calls for their release, and criticisms from the press. If they were publicly shared without being beckoned by the media, those disclosures have not been consistent. This is the case with the monthly production statements.
When oil production started in December 2019, the public received oil production reports, which also included the revenues received in that month from royalties and the sale of the crude. The Ministry of Finance was the agency responsible for producing them.
“The regular publication of the [report] will allow for greater transparency in this new sector of the economy,” the Finance Ministry had said while announcing the reports, “ensuring that the public is fully aware of the amount of petroleum being produced and revenues being generated. Such transparency is important, given the magnitude of revenues that will be generated from this resource.”
A few of these reports were produced and published but the regular publications waned during the elections saga. They did not resume when the new administration took over in August. The website of the Ministry of Finance has been down for weeks, as it is being revamped.