GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC -The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Wednesday said it wanted to “categorically re-iterate” that it stands by the Ministry of Natural Resources, ruling out any possibility of the US$214 million in disputed audited costs for expenses incurred from 1999 to 2017 being changed.
“The Authority wishes to categorically re-iterate that it stands by its advice to the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Government of Guyana that the Cost Bank Adjustment of US$214.4 million as reported in the “Audit Report Recommendation Final” by IHS Markit is the accepted final figure,” GRA’s Commissioner General Godfrey Statia said in the brief statement.
Earlier this month, the Guyana government said a senior official of the Ministry of Natural Resources who “acted without the requisite authorization” is to be disciplined following the controversy that has erupted here over a reduction in the audited US$214 million expense of the oil and gas company, ExxonMobil.
Natural Resource Minister Vickram Bharrat said that from the inception, the government’s position has always been that the GRA is the sole and final Authority to determine the outcome of the EEPGL Stabroek Block Cost Recovery Audit for the 1999 – 2017 period.
He said the Ministry of Natural Resources’s role was to oversee the audit and facilitate the exchange of information and documentation among the relevant parties, including the GRA.
The overall amount spent on exploration in the Stabroek Block from 1999 to 2017 totals US$1.6 billion. If the company accepts that the US$214 million should not be calculated as the cost of oil, Guyana will be entitled to 50 percent or US$107 million. The remainder goes to the co-venturers ExxonMobil, Hess, and China National Overseas Oil Company.
Earlier this week, the chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Guyana Limited, Alistair Routledge, said the company had reengaged the London-based auditing firm, IHS Markit, to prove that as much as 90 percent of the US$214 million could be accounted for based on its now stacked away 20-year-old records.
But in his statement, Statia has noted several statements in the press related to the above Cost Oil Audit, the most recent attributed to Routledge.
“Further, the Authority unequivocally states that its correspondence to IHS Markit seeking clarity to the said “Audit Report Recommendation Final” and copied to EMGL should in “no way or form” be construed as a change in the Authority’s position that the Cost Bank Adjustment of US$214.4 million be adjusted, nor to re-open the process as intimated by the CEO of EMGL,” Statia added.
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