There is some measure of public concern over how our oil resources are being managed. At the beginning of July, the nation was told in a Ministry of Natural Resources media release that ExxonMobil had executed its seventh oil lift offshore Guyana. The release went to some lengths to provide details of amounts of lifts executed up to that time, their total monetary value and the amounts accruing to Guyana from those lifts. It went further, asserting that the information was being disseminated “in keeping with the current administration’s commitment to transparency and accountability within the petroleum sector” and proffering that “the administration remains committed to providing updates on oil lifts and sales as may be necessary to ensure that all stakeholders and members of the public are informed.”
This, of course, is as it should be, though one wonders whether the assurances provided in the Ministry of Natural Resources’ press release are not somewhat overdone, in a begging the question kind of way. One of those pronouncements in which the premise of the argument presupposes the truth of its conclusion.
In effect and presumably, unintentionally, while the release may have provided numbers, amounts and volumes of oil lifts and their respective monetary values, it appears designed, to a greater extent, to satisfy the owners’ image-management concerns regarding the finances accruing from oil sales. On the other hand, it also comes across as striving to arrive at the goal of satisfying the image-management concerns of the framers of the missive in the matter of the accountability considerations that attend our oil funds.
This, mind you, is nothing new. It tends to happen when a government gets a sense that what it does has become afflicted by a greater measure of public scrutiny than it might have wished for. There have been a host of other occurrences in our post-independence history in which accountability was or has become a public worry. Successive political administrations have employed assurances of their integrity that go out on a limb to quell public anxiety.
The problem is that where the management of image is concerned, public pronouncements dripping with altruistic assurances have become a dead giveaway. The simple truth is that they have become unconvincing in their repetitiveness. Is it not high time, therefore, that officialdom begins to exclude the varnish from the offerings on matters of national importance? How our oil funds are managed is certainly one of those issues. Therefore, attention should be paid to the bottom line, however awkward that option might be.
So that whatever assurances the aforementioned media release may have sought to give, the reality in this instance reposes in the controversy revolving around a desirable formula by which payments accruing from oil lifts should be administered. It also includes where the authority lies when it comes to removal and disbursement of monies from those accumulated amounts.
