Contentiousness over gas pricing

Sep 01, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – It is a standard now that whenever Guyana’s oil czar Bharrat Jagdeo provides an answer to most issues, the result is more questions generated.  These are questions that concern because they lead in a direction that is not healthy for this country.  The award of a contract by the Government of Guyana to US based firm Fulcrum, LNG stands as a case in point.  Fulcrum LNG is in existence for all of a year, has no history of operating in the gas monetization business, its newly drafted CEO, Jesus Bronchalo, worked over 19 years for ExxonMobil, and had left the company only a few months before.

In a nutshell, and taken charitably, it seems that Mr. Bronchalo was in an awful hurry (at least for the record) to put distance between himself and his former employer, ExxonMobil and then, to rush even more swiftly to register his brainchild, Fulcrum LNG.  Now, to crown all this off, Bronchalo and Fulcrum LNG beat off 16 other bidders to win a contract to monetize Guyana’s gas.  If there is one thing to be said for this whole affair, it is that Bronchalo and Fulcrum LNG lead a charmed life, benefit from having the angels on their side.  For his part, Vice President of Oil, Jagdeo said he has no relationship with the former ExxonMobil veteran, and that he only met him once.  If Bharrat Jagdeo says it was so, then that is bankable.  But it was what transpired at that single meeting, as Jagdeo insists, that should have opened the Guyana oil czar’s eyes and made he and his government watchful.  Jagdeo’s own words from a question raised at his most recent press conference speak powerfully.

“I met the gentleman once when they were making a report on the Gas to Energy Project, it was a contentious engagement with him because we were discussing the pricing policy for the gas that’s the only time I saw him he came as part of the taskforce…Never saw him again and then I met him subsequent to the award of the contract never in between. So that is clear and I shouldn’t really be feeding into it.”

According to Jagdeo, “it was a contentious engagement.”  We take him literally, with emphasis on “contentious.”  It means that there was serious disagreement, with a lot of bickering and wrangling.  Whether it was brutal and inconclusive Jagdeo did not go into any details.  It is one of his newer trademarks: when he senses that he is being backed into a tight corner, the walls closing in, and some unknown danger is hovering, he retreats into these taut responses.  In other words, the manner of the Vice President is to say as little as possible and to quickly slam shut the door to any further question and answer exchange.  We would think that since Jagdeo assigned himself full responsibility for the rich oil and gas sector that he would be rich with answers on every aspect of it, whether large or small.  Jagdeo has been the opposite, with information coming in small and grudging doses from him, and then only when pressed for answers or his positions.

It is interesting what this “contentious engagement” (per Jagdeo himself) was all about.  Incredibly, it was “the pricing policy for the gas.”  We repeat Jagdeo’s words so that all Guyanese are on the same page: “it was a contentious engagement…discussing the pricing policy for gas…”  This is astonishing, and though part and parcel of host country and foreign company discussions, a warning bell ought to have sounded in Jagdeo’s head.  If this guy (Bronchalo) is going to fight against Guyana about gas pricing today, most likely trying to squeeze the guts out of Guyana for its gas, then that does not bode well for Guyana’s gas monetization future with him around at ExxonMobil.  But he went and established Fulcrum LNG in the blink of an eye and is now the man in charge of selling Guyana’s gas.  Something is not adding up here, what are Guyanese missing, that is the issue.  There have been too many of these strange developments in Guyana, and this Bronchalo-Fulcrum gas monetizing deal seems to be following the blueprint.

• Bharrat Jagdeo, Editorial, Fulcrum LNG, Government, Guyana