MV Barima: Buying time, Arranging Outcome, Controlling Narrative

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592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

MV Barima: Buying time, Arranging Outcome, Controlling Narrative

OPINION BY: GHK Lall– August 2026

One has to live here to come to grips with the PPP Govt’s ways.  When developments favor, it charges forward at a full gallop.  When it is disadvantaged, all the leadership tricks accumulated over the years are rolled out. The exhuming of the MV Barima from its underwater grave is illuminating of how the government works at buying time and giving itself space.  One of the objectives of the delaying tactics is to help it with creating a fresh, self-serving narrative on a tragedy that the ruling party wishes that the people will forget. 

The faster the better.  The more complete the forgetting is, the more content the brutish national leadership is.

It was inevitable that rank politics would intrude in the midst of raw tragedy.  A boat at the bottom with bodies in it to be brought up.  From the record, there’s slowing down with devotion to every T crossed and every I dotted.  There are still many X’s and O’s missing.  Cargo.  Bodies.  Numbers.  Shipshape.  In a free-flowing marine environment time doesn’t standstill.  Time tears apart what’s left.  Steel corrodes.  None should need an education on how rapidly the flesh erodes.  Or how underwater predators flourish in a strange, new, feeding ground.  I am trying to be delicate here; maybe didn’t do too well.

How well the government is doing isn’t debatable.  It isn’t doing well at all.  Beyond engaging in its tortured review process, its slow walk to nowhere idea, and its gambling on salvaging half of a ship.  Recover the ship and produce the evidence will indicate some diligence.  Of a special sort.  Dubious.  Disfigured.  Trying to piece together the shards of that wreckage could be the mother of all fixes.  I think that this is part of the depraved vision of the PPP Govt.  Salvage completed.  Vessel delivered.  Time to wash hands.  Watch developments.  There is a Commission of Inquiry in place. 

It provides confidence (to the government) that duty will be done, with few feathers stirred the wrong way.  It’s well to remember that many families are mourning.  It would be tasteless to raise a ruckus.

Before proceeding, I register a concern.  My hope is that the ill-omened MV Barima reaches the surface intact.  With the PPP, I have learned to expect anything.  Anything that’s on life’s darker side.  Because when note is taken of a group of men who ignores precedent, who dismisses standards, who mocks principles, there is astonishment at the same gents suddenly transformed into major disciples of process and procedure.  What could be afoot?  What mischief is in the air, but still under the table?  These questions are relevant. 

For there’s a government that is desperately trying to shake the stench of a human disaster (discard maritime) that sticks to its pores.  If it can’t shake the stench, then it could certainly shake the dice so that it rolls to the government’s favor

.There may be conscientious Guyanese who think, who expect, who hope, for a fair and straight process-tender, probe, depth, truth, and admission-from this government’s brain trust, relative to the MV Barima postmortem.  I feel sorry for those citizens.  They need to have their own heads probed and excised of its toxins.  When has the PPP Govt dealt straight with the Guyanese people?  Police killings.  Sacrificial killings.  Copter killings.  Why should it start now with boat killings of 100 or so? 

Why would the PPP Govt see it fit to be straight after all of its lies, its secret assassins (who aren’t so secret), its distortions and its deformities?  Get some sense, Guyanese.  Be true to thy self. 

There is no reason for the PPP Govt to be energized and genuinely committed to salvage exercise, to review exercise, when the blood of over 100 Guyanese is on its head.  Blood on its hands.  Blood on its lips.  Blood that stains its wasted soul.

Fellow Guyanese: the MV Barima salvage process is about buying time.  About arranging the outcome.  About preparing the narrative to sell another set of falsehoods. 

So, there can be more drinking of the blood of Guyanese.  I call it, as I see it.

Asking a Favor of The PPP Govt

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592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY & INTEGRITY JOURNALISM ♦GUYANA

Asking a Favor of The PPP Govt

OPINION BY: GHK LALL – August 2026

Pride is swallowed.  A favor is publicly asked of the PPP Govt.  Because there is utter confidence that people in the Office of the President, Office of the Prime Minister, and Office of the 2nd Vice President all avidly absorb what I share with the Guyanese people, my plea will get to the right person in the right place.  My tried-and-true philosophy for the PPP (and others) is simple.  I write, they read.  This message is for His Excellency, President Mohamed Irfaan Ali.

I have a problem.  Even more importantly, the entire region has a problem, a huge one.  The CCJ President, Justice Winston Anderson, is digging in his heels, seems settling in for a long stay.  Not to mince words, that would be the worst development for Guyana, and all those other big and small countries dotting the map between here and the Bahamas.  Hence, this appeal to Guyana’s Pres Ali.

From all indications, he shares a more than solid relationship with Justice Anderson.  I think it would not be out of bounds to assert that the relationship is so close, as to be an intimate and trusted one.  Think of this, my fellow citizens.  Would Pres Ali deign to engage any Justice Tom, or Dick, or Harry to discuss the hang ups relative to the frozen state of the appointments of Guyana’s chancellor of the judiciary and chief justice with the then Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Aubrey Norton?  Then, to follow up with him? 

Then, to call back more than once, and test the patience of his listener by pushing the envelope further across the table until it was lodged in Mr. Norton’s gullet?  I don’t think so.  Not Pres Ali.  Not on a matter so long delayed, so infinitely delicate that a risk is taken, by placing it into clumsy or crude hands.  Not for those two appointments.  Pres Ali may be many things.  But one thing he is not: he is not reckless to the point of slackness.  Not when so much is involved.  Not when the power dynamic could come under pressure.  Not when Vice President, Dr. Jagdeo is there to coach him on the way things like CoJ and CJ are done.

Therefore, the CCJ’s President Anderson was the right partner with the right credentials (and title) and with the right level of gumption (go and get it done).  Having apparently cajoled President Anderson to take up that sensitive job. i.e., approach Mr. Norton for his buy-in on specified movements and names for Guyana’s CoJ and CJ positions, Pres. Ali now has to take it to another level.  The favor I ask of him is that he communicates to CCJ President Winston Anderson that he really should go quickly, quietly, into the night.  Ease away gingerly. 

Walkaway with some residual dignity intact.  It is clear to me that there’s an extraordinary bond that exists between Guyana’s Pres Ali and the CCJ’s President Anderson.  Pres Ali must tap into that relationship and influence the CCJ number one to become the CCJ’s number eight.  That is, on the outside.  Out of the picture.  Out of contention.  He wouldn’t be out in the cold.  Might even be rescued by one of Exxon’s subsidiaries knocking about the place.

I understand the magnitude of the favor that I am asking of Guyana’s Pres Ali.  It is not such a simple matter to let go of a guaranteed ally at the region’s apex court.  But how will he be able to manage?  Inside of the CCJ is now like a gas chamber -all poison.  Outside of the CCJ, there is hostility and heartbreak.  In his defense, President Anderson put out a voluminous statement. 

His problem was that there was a waiting chorus ready to take him on.  I think he is scarred and skinned.  I think that he is now seen as judicially anemic, a lame duck leader

Pres Ali should nudge him, lean on him.  Time to go.  The PPP will have to go on.  So, would I.

CCJ -Is This What Standards Have Become?

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

CCJ -Is This What Standards Have Become?

OPINION BY: GHK LALL— August 2026

It pains to listen, read, absorb the descendants of slaves and indentured servants make public representation that prioritizes chasing after those condemned.  Leakers.  After all the great sacrifices made by fore parents, in the jaws of fearsome savagery, this is where matters terminate.  An emphasis, a priority, on tracking leakers.  Notwithstanding all the education, some of substantial quality, this is the sum of, shall I say, intellectual and ethical curiosity.  The heart of issues, its commanding pull, is the first casualty that collapses.  The next has to be we ourselves -me and you.

Coming out of Trinidad, some serious men and women with hard-earned reputations for illustriousness took the bull by the horns.  There’s a problem at the CCJ.  At the top.  In some of the worst ways possible.  Coming out of Guyana, the reaction was telling and chilling.  Pursue the leakers.  Is this for real?  Is somebody serious here?  The matter at hand is not of some government ministry with a suspected long program of corruption and generalized wrongdoing. 

The concern is that the system of justice at its highest elevation in this region now appears tainted.  Smells rancid.  Besmirched by its own hand, as alleged.  There must be some significance attached to the implications of the allegations made.  Not by political opponents in a political campaign.  But by respected jurists against a brother.  It calls for some guts, some trait in the character, to take such a momentous step. 

The anxieties were too tormenting-perhaps, to the point of being unbearable-for no objection to be tendered, no trail of disagreement to be imprinted.

Now the best that can be offered in reaction (in and out of Guyana) is to go after whoever breached walls, penetrated too far.  In the situation, I wonder what is thought of the five CCJ judges who made their positions so clear?  Maybe they should have let sleeping dogs lie.  From the snippets, however, there was more than a trace of dysfunction at the CCJ.  It was being eroded, and eroding, from deep inside.  And not at some mundane level. 

I invite my fellow Guyanese to weigh this question.  What if the situation, as identified, is allowed to continue?  Could it be said that there are more opportunities for more travesties and miscarriages to be inflicted on the peoples of this region?  Without the specifications of some of the hard disagreements among the judges, what probability for institutional self-improvement? 

Or, more ominously, what probability for further degradation, based on the stream of allegations?

Frankly, whoever leaked those emails did the CCJ and this region a huge favor.  The CCJ administration (and the political overlords) are afforded the room to examine what went on, finalize the steps necessary for a cure.  The region is now able to place the CCJ under a microscope and study from its people to its processes to its output. 

Languishing in ignorance.  Believing that a straight deck and a fair deal are at work.  Though such may not be the case.  An injustice. 

Then that is a command for exposure and enlightenment.  Some developments, some circumstances, are too vital to be left to resolve themselves on their own.  A leak serves as a spur to action, a call to correction, however harsh.  In the call to go after leakers, I go back to my slave reference. 

When the slave rebels were hunted down, it extended the ignominy of slavery.  When slaves were recruited, or pressed into duty, to track down those fighting for their cause, they (the trackers) were damaging themselves.

I think that some damage has been done to Guyanese.  I stop there.  But if the level of trust, the high degree of confidence, that should repose in the CCJ suffers from the slightest decline, then that has to amount to a big consideration for free and pure functioning of the law and the dispensation of what passes for justice in this region.  If not at the CCJ, then where?  If not with those who sit at the CCJ table, then who? 

Should the CCJ lack the required ethical fiber to perform at the highest, cleanest level, then all is lost.  Our ancestors made too many sacrifices in the fields, skimped in the homes, for matters to come to this.

A Judge for Every Season

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592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

A Judge for Every Season

OPINION BY: GHK LALL— August 2026

I have heard about a hanging judge.  From readings, I know about travelling judges.  There’s familiarity with governing judges better known as Administrative Law Judges.  Thanks to the leader of the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), Mr. Aubrey Norton, I now have my first exposure to an intruding judge. 

As I thank CCJ President Winston Anderson for his interests in Guyana’s business, and his helping hand, how did he find the time to get anything done at the CCJ?  Something of quality.  Sure, what he did was something of value.  I can hear Guyanese-born Mark Holder crooning away.  What I can’t understand is how a Jamaican-born judge allowed himself to get embroiled in Guyana’s never less than brutish affairs.  In attempting to be a judge for all seasons, he should have remembered Sir Thomas More, the original man for all seasons.  Look what happened to him.

It is said that no good deed goes unpunished.  Now, Justice Anderson is hearing just that, as he is forced to relive his ill-advised foray into Guyana’s politics.  There is the lash of disbelief.  Surely, Justice Anderson is wise enough, had to know, that was a lose-lose proposition.  For him.  Without going into the details of Mr. Norton’s revelations (more expressive on this occasion), it seems that Justice Anderson took it upon himself, or was engaged by the PPP Govt, to function as a one-man Judicial Service Commission.  Not in Jamaica where he was born.  Not in Trinidad where he operates.  But in Guyana, where he has little business.  Or does he?

Considering the disclosures emerging from his five CCJ colleagues, with a thrust in the direction of the Azruddin Mohamed extradition case, and now this elaboration from Mr. Norton, question naturally arise re the scales of justice in the CCJ? 

Guyanese have heard a word before relative to a court matter in the local environment, which left them shaken and queasy.  It was uttered by a noble American who was bold enough (and confident enough) to speak with assurance of a guarantee.  These things are too sophisticated, too complex, for a man with a head as small as mine. 

But there was Justice Amderson acting in the capacity of unpaid adviser, roving solicitor, and his version of shuttle diplomacy.

Back and forth, back and forth.  Between Pres Ali and the APNU head, Mr. Norton.  A wee bit unbecoming for a CCJ President, so I think.  Phone call after phone call, as though he had shares in AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.  If nothing else, Justice Anderson must be recognized: a bundle of energy, a real dynamo. 

It looks bad.  It smells bad.  Personally speaking, Justice Anderson appears to be too tight with the PPP Govt.  I cannot say what was in Pres Ali’s head, nor what was in Justice Anderson’s head at the time of the Yonette Cummings-Edwards shocker.  I can only share what is in my head.  This whole affair did not coat Pres Ali nor President Anderson in a blaze of glory.  Frankly, it leaves a terrible taste.  Pres Ali shouldn’t have involved the judge.  For his part, Justice Anderson had to decline politely any invitation. 

This raises another question.  Was he invited or did he volunteer?  See what I mean when I spoke of complications and being over my head?

The one participant in this political-judicial trio that conducted himself with aplomb and astuteness has to be Mr. Aubrey Norton of the APNU.  Do not bring that here!  Get that dead cat out of here!  Clearly, the PPP Govt was that desperate, it would do anything to overcome the senior judicial appointments chokepoint.  The problem is Justice Anderson allowed himself to be ensnared, probably with the best of intentions, only to have egg on his face and shirtfront.  It may not be a fresh egg.

Is it only Guyana where matters reach this state?  I’m beginning to doubt my sanity.  Then again, I remember how dirty Guyana is, despite the oil gloss.  Perhaps, that also had a sponsorship role in this soap opera. 

Summation: Justice Anderson should have erred on the side of caution.  Thanks, but no thanks.

Silence is Barren

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592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦ GUYANA

Silence is Barren

OPINION BY: GHK LALL —August 2026

It is said that silence is golden.  Considering where the PPP Govt has taken silence relative to the new profit sharing, I would say that silence isn’t golden.  Silence is barren.  Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, a man of triathlon political stamina, is suddenly out of breath.  Ever had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Jagdeo the marathon talker on the go?  Apparently, he has hit a bump on the road and gone down into some ditch.  When the Guyanese people need to hear from their chief oil and gas policymaker, they are left sucking sand, spitting bricks. 

Forget about silence is golden.  For reasons unknown, silence is now manifesting some sinister complexions.

Look I’m one of those dumb country boys who don’t know jack from jill.  But I know silence when I’m near it.  Did some musclebound heavyweight from Exxon put Dr. Jagdeo in a headlock, cutoff his oxygen?  So completely that not even a gurgle escapes past his larynx?  This is ruff stuff.  But what could be sweeter than Guyanese now all lined up and 50:50 profit sharing a reality!  Not to come, but already part of the net revenue calculus.  Not with hands outstretched, but with the biggest bucket that could be found to collect the billions earned and due to this country from its oil.  Guyana’s oil mandarin can’t go on leave now.  Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, has left his phone or Laptop at home, but he is not the one.  Bharrat Jagdeo is the only one.

Silence has its uses.  Can be a sign of refinement, a measure of comportment.  Depending on the occasion.  And the company. 

Silence in what should be a time of celebration amounts to what is a sacrilege.  Pardon me, but what else? 

Dr. Jagdeo has been Guyana’s strongman for ages.  He has slammed people around, turned them upside down.  He cannot go from strongman to missing man.  Or tin man.  His is not the option to go from missing leader to tongue-tied speaker.  Surely, that qualifies as a contradiction in terms: a tongue-tied speaker.  I think that silence is slackness.  Within the framework of the new profit-sharing setup between Exxon and Guyana, silence is tantamount to dereliction of duty.

I simplify with an example.  Imagine the oil consortium operating offshore discovers five billion barrels of new oil.  But says absolutely nothing.  No information.  No communication.  Not a conversation.  What’s up with that picture?  It’s where Guyanese are in terms of their Exxon mortgage paid off.  When there should be singing in the streets, with Dr. Jagdeo in the lead, there is silence.  When there should be shouting from the rooftops, and Jagdeo at his loudest, there is silence. 

Grim, awful, deathly silence, as though Guyana is in the middle of a nuclear winter.

Frankly, I am disappointed in the Vice President.  He could have stood from the balcony of his offices, or the roof gardens of Freedom House, and give Guyanese the V (for victory) sign.  He must be under a tremendous amount of pressure that even sticking two fingers in the air is a torture.  Guyana’s Number One Oilman never struck me as one of those strong, silent types.  More of an excitable, raucous, presence when the spirit took over him, for sure. 

For a long time, it was the time of his favorite spirits.  Now the spirits have deserted him, and he’s a shadow of something.  Don’t ask me what, as I am still working my way through that molasses swamp. 

Unfathomable it may be to some.  But the gods of silence have taken over this country.  I don’t think it’s for the better.  Mark my words, folks.

Whatever the concoction, whatever the form of the contraption, there will have to be a conversation.  Meanwhile, it is blissful silence.  Something tells me that a pot full of liquid is heading Guyanese way. 

The first sprinklings came when Guyana’s President of Oil, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo went into silent mode.  Rain in the forecast for Guyana’s 50:50 profit parade.  

Exxon•Guyana Profit Sharing Pennywise-Pt III

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 THE 592 GUARDIAN ACCOUNTABILITY INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM

Exxon•Guyana Profit Sharing Pennywise-PtIII

OPINION BY: GHK LALL– August 2026

The Exxon juggernaut rolled, had a great second quarter 2026.  Guyana had a hand in the company’s numbers, with its teeny-weeny 900,000 barrels a day.  The big news from this side of the Americas is that Exxon has been repaid to the penny its US$55 billion investment. 

Thanks for the jumpstart, all those projects humming, all those barrels churning out day after day.  Soon, Guyana will be in that exclusive club: a million barrel a day oil producer.  But at what a cost!  What has been straight with Exxon and this PPP Govt?  What can be trusted when no one can speak straight, give that sense of comfort, because their words ring of reliability?  It is against this backdrop that I offer a stripped-down version of what 50:50 profit sharing could look like.  To put my money where my mouth is, this is where I stand.

Please give a look at this barebones scenario in which I use one barrel of oil.  For purposes of conversation, the price is US$100 a barrel.  From production of one barrel of oil there’s revenue of US$100.  Gross revenue it is called.  I warn that from here on the wicket gets sticky.  There is that beast-an 800-pound gorilla-in the room and at the head of the table.  It is what’s called OPERATING EXPENSES. 

Given Guyana’s history in the last six years with oil, with Exxon’s accounting, my expectations are low.  By such time that Exxon’s world-class number crunchers are done with Operating Expenses, US$100 is not US$100.  It is not US$90 nor US$80 nor US$70.  I stake my ground, draw my line.  Guyana will be lucky if it ends up with Gross Oil Revenue of US$100 minus Operating Expenses at US$65.  I see it as being more at around US$60 in Net Oil Revenue. 

This is the magic, mystery, and monstrosity of Operating Expenses.  I pause for a moment.

Recall I’m dealing the hand that Exxon itself has displayed to this country.  Strange postures.  Evasive language.  Shadowy numbers.  Recall a maagah US$214 million in audit findings and those two glaring developments associated with it.  By some mysterious hand, US$214 million fell to US$3 million overnight.  Second, that relatively small amount of US$214 million (for Exxon) has been held up for several years now.  No comment from me on this.  I don’t have to say one word, since both the US$214 million and years speak for themselves. 

Now let this be said: I think that Exxon may think nothing of taking care of bumps in its way whenever money is involved.  Even when the amount of money is minute.  Now think of what to expect when billions are in play.  When Operating Expenses mutate into a monster that is turned into a weapon against Guyana’s interests.

Having said very clearly where I am, and how I envision 50:50 profit sharing will materialize, I return to Net Oil Revenue now standing at US$60.  It has to be divided in two.  Exxon gets US$30 and Guyana collects US$30.  The Guyana Government gets an opportunity to expound on the Exxon relationship and the trusted partnership. 

The Guyanese people should be happy.  All’s well that ends well.  Not so fast, folks.  There is that lovely consideration that is not going away, and which no Guyanese should forget.  Who pays Exxon’s taxes?  Guyana does. 

However that is schemed, whatever the form it takes, no matter how spun or swung, this is set in stone: Guyana pays Exxon’s taxes.  Or to put it better still: Exxon does not pay a dime of the taxes that it incurred.  Immediately this could be seen for the imbalances that are embedded.

Exxon has Guyana over a barrel (no pun) with Operating Expenses.  Then, Guyana is under the gun with the taxes and that farce about tax certificates.  Conclusion: In my single barrel presentation, this much should be obvious: Guyana’s US$30 (half cut) and Exxon’s US$30 (whatever that percentage) are not the same. 

It shouldn’t surprise, therefore, that the 50:50 profit sharing language of Exxon is so studiously, so painfully, careful.  Think of what’s afoot.— The 592 Guardian

Exxon-Guyana profit sharing: the dollars

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Exxon-Guyana profit sharing: the dollars

OPINON BY: GHK LALL—AUGUST, 2026

The issue is more moolah, some more dinero, for Guyana.  A straight up, fair shuffle, 50:50 profit cut of 100 percent oil revenues minus 2 percent royalty and operating expenses.  Just when Guyanese started to feel good about themselves, started drooling about extra oil money and having a party, I must be the bad guy and bruk up de party.

I brace for more than La Nina.  I’m bracing for a Texas drought, followed by a Texas blackout.  Talk Texas.  Think Exxon.  These guys didn’t get to the top of the oil world by being cowpokes.  They may sound sweeter than Jimmy Stewart. 

Whoever is smart in Guyana had better take my advice:

They are deadlier than a rattler in the bed; and Freddy Krueger under it.  From here, it gets nastier.

Exxon had a good second quarter for 2026.  Remember the date: July 31, 2026.  It will rate in Exxon lore as one of its better days in recent years.  Now Guyanese, remember this: July 31, 2026 represented something else: the first glimpses of yet another lurking Guyana tragedy.  For Exxon, it was:

♦ US$14.5 billion in earnings

♦ US$23.6 billion operating cash flow

♦ US$17 billion plus in Free Cash Flow

Great news for Exxon.  With the following two small throwaway bones for Guyana:

♦ 900,000 daily production barrels

♦ FPSO #Five projected to add 250k barrels

Amidst big, beautiful numbers for Exxon, that was the recognition for Guyana.  Chief Darren Woods gave himself a fat pat on the shoulder: Exxon broke a record in recouping its investment in Guyana so early. Another big raise pending.   However, not one goddamn word (or number) from Super Chief Woods about when Guyana gets closer to the much-vaunted 50:50 profit sharing from 100 percent net oil revenues.  The cost bank is empty.  Hence, it follows automatically that the profit-sharing formula changes from:

(100-75-2)/2 to:

(100–2)/2  (Net oil revenues divided by two)

When it was Moneyman Neil Hansen’s turn to share good cheer on July31st, he went overboard. He converted to his best imitation of a Talmudic scholar.  Smooth and sophisticated.  Profound as a Renaissance Man.  He threw in the oil deal.  He noted operating costs.  He went from the general to the specific, after first going all over the world. 

I do Mr. Hansen a favor, add to his luster: behold another Bharrat Jagdeo disciple.  Money-boss Hansen went around in circles, without moving his feet.  And even when he did get around to admitting it, his energy level was alarmingly low. 

Guyana should be in line for a 50:50 profit share.  Profit share of what, Mr. Hansen, that’s the million-dollar question I table?  Specifically, of what is left from the money— revenue when Exxon is done with it?  Answer it, please.  Thanks to Mr. Hansen, Guyanese have a clue of where the wind blows.

According to Mr. Hansen, Exxon’s share of oil in the Stabroek Block will decline.  Like hell, it will.  Exxon will not allow that to happen.  Seven projects already approved.  Projects eight and nine have been cleverly sprayed by Exxon into Guyana’s air (and Guyanese ears). 

Listen for 10 and 11.  Money.  Money.  Money.  As in billions of US dollars.  As in the Guyana cost bank reborn and owned by Guyana.  

Meanwhile, when Guyanese pressed their most trusted partner on when their fair and full 50:50 profit share begins, that’s when Mr. Alistair Routledge donned his mask, fastened his earplugs, and disappeared.  He spoke cagily.  Was denser than the Dead Sea; both sea and scrolls.  The man who spoke brightly about Exxon’s world-class accounting systems is suddenly talking an altogether different language. 

World-class, too, I assure everyone.  ‘Next year.  Prices.  Acceleration.  Significantly increase.  What do those mean?

Finally, I arrive at Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo.  For six years he danced with Exxon on all oil issues.  Now, he has a problem.  He ran out of dancefloor.  Equal profit share, remember that, doc?  No answer.  Explanation A: Dr. Jagdeo is now practicing medicine.  He lost interest in oil.  In part three, how all of this is shaping up.

NO ROYALTY, NO RULES

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦ GUYANA

NO ROYALTY, NO RULES

The Kurupung Uranium Project and Guyana’s Regulatory Blind Spot

 Opinion By: The Board  ·  August, 2026

THE STATE NEGOTIATES WHAT IT HAS ALREADY GIVEN AWAY

Company filings on the Kurupung Uranium Project confirm what this news-media has long argued about Guyana’s extractive governance: the royalty owed to the Government of Guyana from any future uranium production has not been fixed. It will be “negotiated at the time that application is made for a mining permit” — a negotiation that can be deferred indefinitely, since applications may be filed “at any time during the term of a PL.”

Read plainly, this means the State of Guyana currently has no claim to any share of a resource historically estimated at 20.6 million pounds of uranium, sitting under 92.2 square kilometres of Region Seven, until the holder of the prospecting licence decides the moment is right to ask.

The contractor sets the clock. The regulator waits for it to ring.

We have written before about the opacity surrounding how exploration rights to Kurupung changed hands — from LIA Industries Pte. Ltd. of Singapore to U92 Energy Corp. of Canada — without the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) exercising any visible control over the transaction.

That finding stands. What follows extends it: the royalty vacuum is not an isolated omission. It is one symptom of a licensing framework that structurally cedes leverage to the licensee at every point where leverage should belong to the State.

PILLAR ONE: A ROYALTY WITH NO FLOOR

Guyana’s petroleum sector, for all its own well-documented deficiencies, at least operates within a negotiated framework anchored by precedent — the Stabroek Block production-sharing agreement, whatever its flaws, is a public, referenceable instrument.

Large-scale mineral mining under the Mining Act 1989 has no equivalent anchor. There is no statutory royalty rate for uranium. There is no benchmark percentage that GGMC or the Minister must not go below.

The rate is whatever is negotiated, whenever negotiation occurs, between the State and a single counterparty who has spent years — and by the time of application, potentially millions of dollars in drilling and evaluation — building the case for terms favourable to itself.

This is not a technicality. It means the government of Guyana’s return on a strategic, security-sensitive mineral is a function of negotiating leverage at a moment of the company’s choosing, not a matter of law.

 

PILLAR TWO: AN OFF-TAKE DEAL STRUCK WITHOUT THE REGULATOR IN THE ROOM

Before any royalty framework has been discussed, Gibraltar-based ROPA Investments Limited has already secured the contractual right to purchase up to 50 percent of the first 40 million pounds of uranium oxide produced from Kurupung — an option on 20 million pounds of production from a resource that has not yet cleared a mining permit, let alone entered production.

This news-media has previously established that ROPA and LIA Industries are related parties structured to present as arm’s-length counterparties in U92’s own acquisition filings.

GGMC was not a party to that transaction. It had no visibility into its terms and no opportunity to weigh how a privately negotiated off-take arrangement, agreed between related parties, might shape the economics of the very royalty the State will eventually sit down to negotiate.

A regulator that is absent from the deal that structures the resource cannot credibly claim to hold leverage over the value extracted from it.

PILLAR THREE: THE NATIONAL REPOSITORY THAT ISN’T REQUIRED TO RECEIVE THE DATA

GGMC describes itself, in its own institutional language, as the national repository for geoscientific data relating to Guyana’s mineral resources. The Mining Act 1989 does not build a mechanism equal to that mandate.

A prospecting licensee is obliged to submit work programmes and quarterly and annual operational reports. On relinquishment of licensed ground, the licensee must submit an evaluation report on the work undertaken. None of these obligations is the same undertaking as surrender of the underlying dataset — the drill logs, assay certificates, geophysical surveys, and resource modelling that constitute the actual commercial and scientific value of exploration.

The only point in the statute where “reports, analyses, and data resulting from investigations and studies” are explicitly required in full is at the application for a mining licence — the same discretionary juncture at which the royalty itself is negotiated.

Guyana’s only clear statutory mechanism for compelling both a royalty and a complete geological dataset from a uranium licensee is a single, optional filing that the licensee alone controls the timing of.

 

PILLAR FOUR: WHAT HAPPENS IF THE STATE SAYS NO

Consider the scenario a functioning regulatory framework should have already answered. GGMC and U92 sit down to negotiate a royalty rate. The company, having already sold forward an option on half its first 40 million pounds of production to a related party, has calculated its economics around a particular return threshold. GGMC, exercising the public interest it is charged to protect, holds out for a higher rate. Talks stall.

What then? The Mining Act offers no compulsory arbitration mechanism for this scenario, no statutory floor the Minister can fall back on, no default rate that applies absent agreement.

The Prospecting Licences run until 18th April 2027, extendable to 18th April 2029. The company can simply wait. It can let the clock run. If the licence lapses without a mining permit application ever being filed, the one statutory trigger that would have compelled surrender of the exploration dataset to the State never fires.

The company walks away — potentially still holding, through its corporate structure, a fully modelled uranium resource derived entirely from exploration conducted under a Guyanese state licence — while GGMC is left with quarterly activity reports and an evaluation summary.

No royalty. No enforceable claim to the data. No mining. And no accountability mechanism requiring anyone to explain why.

PILLAR FIVE: THE COMMUNITIES WHO WERE NEVER ASKED

None of the above accounts for the constituency this publication regards as the first and most fundamental stakeholder: the Indigenous and local communities of Region Seven. The Amerindian People’s Association has called for the Kurupung project to be halted outright, citing the total absence of public and community-level consultation before exploration rights were granted, transferred, and drilled against.

A regulatory framework that permits a foreign-held uranium resource to change corporate hands twice, secure a related-party off-take agreement, and commence a 5,000-metre drilling programme — all before Region Seven’s own residents have been meaningfully consulted — is not a framework failing at its edges. It is failing at its centre.

WHAT THIS NEWS-MEDIA DEMANDS

The pattern here is not new to readers of this news outlet’s ongoing accountability coverage: a regulator structurally absent from the transactions it is meant to police, a State whose return on a strategic mineral is deferred to a moment the extractor controls, and communities treated as an afterthought rather than a precondition. Kurupung differs only in the commodity — uranium is not gold, and the stakes of a genuinely opaque radioactive-minerals sector, in a country with no established uranium regulatory precedent, are of a different order entirely.

This publication calls on the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and the Minister responsible for Natural Resources to state publicly, and without further delay:

◊ Whether a minimum statutory royalty framework for large-scale uranium and radioactive-mineral production is under consideration, and if not, why not;

◊ What legal instrument, if any, compels U92 Energy Corp. or its subsidiaries to surrender full exploration data to GGMC in the event the Prospecting Licences lapse or are relinquished without a mining permit application;

◊ Whether GGMC was consulted on, or was even made aware of, the ROPA Investments off-take agreement prior to its execution; and

◊ What steps have been taken, or will be taken, to conduct genuine community-level consultation with the Indigenous residents of Region Seven before any further drilling proceeds.

The people of Guyana own these minerals. The law, as it stands, has not yet caught up to that fact.

— The Board

Profit Sharing Who said What,Who said Naught.

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY &INTEGRITYJOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Profit Sharing Who said What,Who said Naught

OPINION BY: GHK LALL

Part One
Said Exxon’s Chief Mr. Darren Woods on July 31st:

“The success of this development has set a new standard for the industry, and frankly, has exceeded our own expectations. Delivering on tight schedules, at industry-leading cost – with strong reliability and optimised production – has resulted in recovering our capital and cost nearly two years earlier than anticipated, increasing NPV, and desaturating the cost bank.”

Congratulations to Mr. Woods.  He sounded like Henry Kissinger, a Bloomberg algorithm, and an ancient Babylonian astronomer combined.  Money collected ahead of time.  Why confuse a simple issue with NPV (net present value) and “desaturating the cost bank?”  Given Exxon’s great success story from Guyana’s oil, it is time also for Guyana to succeed from its own oil.  Mr. Woods spoke to his stakeholders.  Guyana’s Dr. Jagdeo has to speak to Guyanese.  I’m still waiting.  

Said Exxon’s SVP and CFO, Neil Hansen also on the same great July 31, 2026 date: 

“…as we mentioned, at this point, we’ve fully recovered the $55 billion of investment, along with all the operating costs and the way the contractor agreement works is we can recover that investment up to 75%. After that, the remaining production is shared 50/50 between us and the government of Guyana.”

 

Thanks, Mr. Hansen.  Guyanese need to watch this fellow.  Is Exxon going to bushwhack Guyana on the full profit sharing?  More sharply, what does he mean by “we can recover that investment up to 75%. After that….?  What is hidden in that sneaky “After that….?”  After that is 25 percent.  It is still percent left.  Watch these Exxon chaps, Guyanese.  Start thinking of the cost bank getting an infusion of some new billions.  

In March 2026: Said Exxon Guyana Country Head, Mr. Alistair Routledge:

We were anticipating sometime next year in 2027 that we were going to get to the point where we had recovered those historic cost probably largely because of just increasing volumes of production that were generating higher and higher revenues to offset the ongoing expenditures plus recover historic costs.”

“If you stay at the current oil price then it will happen this year based on the level of expenditures and the production that we anticipate so that’s a significant acceleration. What that then means is that instead roughly the 14 and a half percent that the country has been receiving by way of revenues into the Natural Resource Fund from the Stabroek production and revenues, what will happen is that percentage will significantly increase.”

Meet Mr. Routledge, Exxon’s Jagdeo.  Quantum mechanics, Exxon-style.  Why can’t none of these guys from Texas talk straight?  They are always qualifying their words, hedging their bets.  He can say “significantly increase” but has a problem with a full 50:50 profit sharing.  WTF!

Now that I hauled Dr, Jagdeo into the Exxon-Guyana profit sharing, what happened to him?  My apologies to he, the PPP and everybody.  Guyana is in the midst of tragedy.  Today, I point to this monumental development of Guyana repaying Exxon every cent of its US$55 billion.  He should be dancing on his head, given what’s involved.

In a genuine, no gimmicks, no nonsense 50:50 profit sharing between Exxon and Guyana, something stands out for me.  In that profit sharing scenario, Guyana would be raking in FOUR TIMES as many profit dollars than it is doing today.  Oil prices rise Guyana’s share is more.  Oil prices fall, Guyana still would get more than before.  Oil prices have to fall off the charts for Guyana to make less than past years.

Think of what any government, any leader can do with such an inflow of dollars into its hands.  Incredible, that Dr. Jagdeo is in church.  He cannot be unhappy about the possibilities: a dozen MV Ma Liska; even at US$60 a barrel.  But I exaggerate.  Moving on, what’s the problem with this full 50:50 profit sharing? 

Something is rotten in Georgetown.  Imagine: with that kind of money freed up, who’d care about PPP corruption?  Or third term?  Say something. sir.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MV Barima -Postmortem II -PM Phillips

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THE 592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM◊ GUYANA

MV Barima –Postmortem II -PM Phillips

Frontally: Prime Minister Phillips disappointed.  A soldier yielding ground.  Weakly.  Unnecessarily.  Pitifully. A leader who abandoned a vantage point that was his to hold.  He let go.  For what reward?  What honor?  Prime Minister Mark Phillips was a general. 

No general should descend to the level of stockade deodorizer.  A general is a bold leader, not a mindless follower. 

In this compulsory postmortem of PM Philips post the MV Barima tsunami, I try to be delicate, considerate.  Too many tears already flow in this brutalized Guyana.

I seek not to bury Mark Anthony Phillips.  I seek ways to glaze him, praise him, to raise him.  But how can I, when he flooded the consciousness of Guyanese with that one dreadful, painful, word.  Noise.  Noise, Mr. PM?  When people are blinded by emotion.  When they see red embers of danger and death lurking in every condition, every cranny.  Their rage roars.  They rise to their fullest height; ready to fight any slight. 

An army general of caliber should recognize a mutiny on his hands.  Mr. Phillips may have been the best general Guyana had at one time.  Show Guyanese that general is still alive, stirring, has something left in him.  Not to NOISE!  A former general should never stoop to a lackey’s level: ready for any dirty job.  I believe that former general, present Prime Minister Phillips still has it in him not to hear noise.  But to know how to defuse a volatile situation.  He should also know how he is being used because of who he is, and draw a line.  This will be the new way.  A standard set for president, second vice president, others (whatever their virtue, their vision.

He doesn’t hear “noise.”  No such word drips past his lips.  What he heard, should have sensed, were the deep-seated wraths of Guyanese who have had it with the PPP Govt.  In the gut!  In the eyeballs.  The man of war transforms into a peacemaker.  The prime minister attiring himself in princely respect.  If there was one man who could have put a stop to one kind of Guyanese called to do work that Untouchables wouldn’t touch, it was Mark Phillips. 

When all he heard in the post MV Barima cascading series of catastrophic failures was “noise” and was unbecoming enough to regurgitate it, he pitched headlong into ignominy.

He laid to waste a rare opening.  All he had to try, to put before the enraged, was this. 

We are all hurting.  We are all bent double by loss unknown and unimaginable.  By pain unlike before and unbearable.  I appeal for the best that’s within all of us.  Help me to deal with this disaster, this tragedy.  Let us stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this hour of supreme national trial.  Let us ready to bury our dead unified and dignified.  Let’s comfort our brothers and sisters with newly discovered sublime beauty of the spirit.  There’ll be time enough later for revisiting and rebuking.  For honest listening and authentic understanding

How spellbinding Mark Anthony Phillips could have been.  Not in the manner of the powerful politician he is.  Or overbearing as he could be.  Overwrought as he was.  But as man of the people rising to majesty’s peaks.  When the people were unhappy.  Driven to frenzies of fury.  He didn’t. 

It is Mark Phillips’ loss; a gem of a moment squandered for the cheap noise.  For depravity’s routine noise.  For politics gone obscene noise.  Should a man, a general, a prime minister, comport himself with flaring aggression, however it’s believed justified, when an impenetrable pall of grief suffocates, reduces to tears? 

I think not.  These discoveries came in this post MV Barima postmortem of Prime Minister Phillips.

I’d be of zero utility to PM Phillips, his political brothers, if I tell him what pleases his ear.  Not piercing, bludgeoning bars of noise that the circumstances demand.  But some make-believe symphony of insipidity.  At ease, mon general.  At ease!  Not I, sire!