Drafters of 1999 Petroleum licence are why we are in this quagmire

Dear Editor,

A recent KN article, “Guyana agreed to lose billions on pre contract, interest costs while Suriname says, ‘not here’,” exposes the magnitude of the ineptness or the colluding intent of the drafters of our 1999 “Petroleum Prospecting and production sharing licence” (PPPSL). The names of these people (the drafters) should be published for posterity, so that generations to come will identify them as the traitors that aided the oil companies to take billions of dollars away from us – robbing us of the good life that was ordained to us by virtue of our oil resources. These drafters of our PPPSL are the initial reason we are in this quagmire – set to lose billions on our oil resources.

The irony of this desecration of our patrimony by the drafters of our PPPSL, which puts them in the realm of collusion, is that they didn’t need to go to Mars to peruse a similar document that they were entrusted to produce. They simply had to look to our neighbour Suriname to get it right.
How do we condone the deeds of these people for giving us the opposite of what pertains in Suriname?
Suriname’s PSC states, “costs incurred before the Signing Date including the purchase of seismic data” and “Interest incurred on loans raised by the Contractor” do not qualify for cost recovery. What was so difficult about this for these morons (the drafters) to comprehend and emulate? The Surinamese consider their PSC as “World-class”, in context, ours have to be “eye-pass”. It is ironic that despite the ludicrousness delivered by the drafters of the PPPSL on which the PSA with Exxon is based, the APNU+AFC and now PPP had shown no intent to renegotiate the 9 billion barrel Stabroek Block PSA with Exxon.

Further, a more asinine contract signed with Tullow, reducing our royalty to 1 percent and recoverable, is evidence of the continued barefaced collusion by our leaders with the drafters of the 1999 agreement. One wonders! What had caused the reason of the drafters and the politicians that cling to their document to depart? I will leave that question to the conspiracy theories of all Guyanese.

Even the evil of the Kaieteur and Canje giveaway was made legal by the 1999 petroleum agreements, as ascertained by VP Jagdeo’s statement – “So whether you have capability or not, that was never a requirement of the [Petroleum] Act.”. Even the VP, a former president and politician highly regarded, has expressed his love for the source document that is heralding the resource curse.

Yours truly,
Rudolph Singh