No formal agreement with govt on reducing disputed audited costs; regrettable Gossai will be disciplined- ExxonMobil

Last Updated on Tuesday, 17 October 2023, 14:29 by Denis Chabrol

ExxonMobil President Alistair Routledge on Tuesday acknowledged telling a parliamentary opposition delegation that an agreement had been reached with government for the reduction in disputed audited costs to US$3 million but said that was not a formal accord.

“We did not have any formal agreement from the ministry and,indeed as the ministry, the minister and the Vice President made clearer, there is the expectation that the GRA is the ultimate authority on that so just to be clear, I did describe the process to the opposition but I did not say that we’ve reached final agreement as authorised by the GRA or the ministry,” he said. He said it is a technical rather than political process and his company was ensuring that the right people sign off.

Mr Routledge added that ExxonMobil Guyana has not finalised the audit process and IHT Markit has since been re-engaged in the process.

He was confident that in the end the company would be able to account for about 90 percent of the US$214 million in costs that had been flagged by the auditor, IHS Markit, for the amount of US$1.6 billion that had been spent from 1999 to 2017.

Mr Routledge also told a news conference that, according to its agreement, the “contact point” for dealing with audit matters was the Ministry of Natural Resources and so had been interfacing with that ministry’s Senior Petroleum Coordinator Gopnauth ‘Bobby’ Gossai.

With government saying that the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is the agency with which the audit costs have to be addressed, Mr Routledge said there would be no need for the agreement to be amended to formally reflect which agency is the contact point for audits.

He regretted that Mr Gossai would be facing disciplinary action, as had been stated by Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat, for interfacing with the company and agreeing to reduced amounts rather that the GRA.  Mr Routledge said Mr Gossai was the person who was asking ExxonMobil to provide audit-related documentation. “I feel very sorry for Mr Gossai. I feel he has been somewhat caught in the middle and was working diligently and in support of the process. Unfortunately, the right people haven’t got to the right people and he has been left carrying that… I think he has worked diligently and with the best of intent,” he said.

The American supermajor’s official said arbitration is a last resort.

For his part, ExxonMobil said the auditing of its expenses was done by “four eyes” – internal auditors, external auditors, IHS Markit and GRA. Noting that there was a transition from the Department of Energy under the APNU+AFC-led government, he said over the last year ExxonMobil provided documents.

The Ministry of Natural Resources’ Minister and Permanent Secretary Joslyn Mc Kenzie have not answered questions about what form that disciplinary action had taken.