Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) president, Nicholas Boyer, says that the State Assets Recovery Agency’s (SARA) investigation into the award of oil blocks is a waste of time, given that there is no existing Petroleum Commission or other supporting regulatory system.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Boyer was questioned by the media on the Chamber’s stance on the article by international media house, Bloomberg. com, which reported on the investigation launched by the agency.
“It was fun to open the Bloomberg article and then you read that SARA is investigating a number of oil companies including ExxonMobil. What I say, and I don’t know how you guys read it, but because of the lack of policy, we are now all over the place. If you wanted to understand or regulate how these blocks were given out, the first thing is we should’ve developed an internal policy…from before these blocks were issued, before we even had a true [oil and gas] industry,” Boyer said.
He said that a lot of the blocks issued would’ve been based on direct negotiations and now that there is an active industry, there is a need to have a regulatory body like a petroleum commission in place.
“The petroleum commission should have its policies on how it should issue these blocks and then subsequent to that you will look at how the previous blocks were given out. Whether there was that type of enquiry or research or study should be done under a petroleum commission,” he said, while noting that he does not think SARA was the best place for that sort of research and decision making to be done.
“At this point I think we are shooting in the dark. I think SARA is wasting its time because of the lack of having a petroleum commission in place, having this policy set up to say how it is going to issue these blocks and how it would approach relinquishments,” he added.
Boyer was also questioned on whether the Chamber was in support of unionising the oil and gas workers, to which he said it was a tricky question to answer given that there are areas in the industry as it relates to employment that are “going well.”
“There have been some discussions that there is not equal pay for people of similar background where the only difference is nationality. That I have to do more research on before I can pronounce,” he said, while noting that he would have to defer the question.
He said that if his countrymen are being treated fairly then there is no need for a union, but if the Guyanese workers are being treated unfairly then he would see the need for collective bargaining.
Given that ExxonMobil and other oil companies are members of the Chamber, he was also questioned on whether they will frame provisions regarding transparency and accountability for their members.
To this, Boyer said that they have a responsibility to be advocates on behalf of the Guyanese public and their members, and it is their intention to promote local content as well as other things that are of interest to the public.
“So yes, to succinctly answer your question, we will definitely promote transparency and accountability,” he added.
