The government did not spend any money on legal fees for Guyana’s case before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in the just-concluded maritime boundary dispute between Guyana and Suriname, President Bharrat Jagdeo says.
At a media conference held at the Office of the President on Monday, Jagdeo said that the fees were met by the oil exploration company, CGX, whose rig was evicted in June 2004 by Surinamese military gunboats while attempting to conduct offshore oil exploration in Guyana’s maritime waters.
CGX spent the sum of CDN$8.9 million in legal fees for proceedings before the tribunal. “I am very grateful to CGX for footing the bill because it did not come from the Treasury,” he said adding that, “This does not mean that CGX have preferences.”
Asked whether there was any agreement between the government and CGX on how the expenses would be defrayed, Jagdeo said that there was no agreement between CGX and the government to defray anything.
“It is not a secret. You ask me this question three years ago and I said to you that CGX had agreed to pay our legal team. We don’t have any agreement to defray this expenditure,” he said.
He said that the government has an agreement with CGX which follows the country’s Petroleum Act. “It is the same agreement we have with REPSOL, Exxon and everyone else. There is no preferential arrangement for CGX because they paid the legal fees for (the government). They had an interest that this matter was resolved amicably so they could resume exploration in that area,” he said.
Last month, the ITLOS awarded Guyana two-thirds of the 31,600 km sq. of the area which was in dispute. The award came three years and seven months after Guyana initiated arbitral proceedings after trying in vain to resolve the maritime boundaries issue with Suriname over a four-year period after the CGX oil rig was forcibly evicted.
