— Jagdeo says all Guyanese must benefit from oil wealth

By Rabindra Rooplall

GOVERNMENT will establish an Oil and Gas Commission, and an Advisory Committee that will be managed by technically-competent Guyanese, while the Minister of Natural Resources will only focus on the policy inputs and directions.

This is according to Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo at his first Press Conference as vice- president on Thursday, at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC).

“The President has also made it clear that he will establish shortly, an advisory group to himself, on oil and gas, the advisory group will be made up of mainly Guyanese who will be advising the President on these issues,” he said.

Dr. Jagdeo emphasised that the government has made it clear in meeting with ExxonMobil, that its success and prosperity must also be shared with Guyanese since it won’t be sustainable otherwise.

“We will insist that Guyanese must share the prosperity, if they are doing well, our people must do well too, in terms of opportunities, employment etc., that will be the guiding principle and philosophy in all our engagements with ExxonMobil, and subsequently once we start looking at the other contracts, then with all of them,” the vice-president said.

Dr. Jagdeo said Exxon must treat local content as a top priority as it pursues its business, as eventually, legislation will enable mandatory compliance.

“We want to get the best technical inputs before we come up with a negotiating brief that will be cleared at the policy level and then we want to engage directly with Exxon to see that this happens,” he said.

CONSULTATION

Dr. Jagdeo continued: “The President will also meet with the local Guyanese community through a series of meetings, maybe with the sectors to listen to them about their views on local content… people will be free to express their views, we have heard from the Guyanese public, we have seen how labour is treated and we have seen that opportunities that could have come to Guyanese are farmed out to non-Guyanese.”

Dr. Jagdeo emphasised that Exxon cannot place blame on their sub-contractors for not meeting local content provisions.

He explained that sub-contractors are not paying comparable wages based on skills, since all Guyanese deserve to be paid fairly.

The vice-president said that the President has expressed a great desire to train a large number of Guyanese in order to fill all job portfolios within the oil and gas sector.

“Over the next six to eight months we will move to the establishment of a petroleum commission as we had said before, the petroleum commission will mainly be a technical commission because what you need is technical oversight with some of the best brains and we hope Guyanese would heavily be involved with of course some foreign help until we can train people,” Jagdeo said.

Meanwhile, focusing on ExxonMobil flaring during its operations and capturing it, Jagdeo said Guyana needs cheaper electricity to develop industrially, while cutting consumers’ cost.

“The availability of gas and how much is available and who will own the facility whether it will be a public private partnership, or if it will be advertised to any other company to do the whole project and then sell the gas to government at a low cost or if it will be a totally government-owned project, all of those decisions have to be made and they will be dependent on the resources available as well as what the market offers,” Dr. Jagdeo said.

He added that ExxonMobil is also eager to move along with the project and a commitment must be made.

Further, he said the Department of Energy will be removed from the Office of the President and transferred to the Ministry of Natural Resources.