Oil sector audits
Kaieteur News– Under the current scheme, oil sector inspections will take forever to be done, and when that is concluded at some point, it would be so late and late in the day, that it has little meaning, and less of appeal. Given the amount of money spent, the associated paperwork involved, the ‘drill down’ necessary to get to the bottom of the things, and the back and forth practice between auditor and auditor, Guyana’s audit of its oil sector has been an unlimited practice. This is our concern with these audits of oil-related activity and expenditure, for which this country is almost responsible, and which they must honor.
As we look at what’s going on, and take matters a little deeper, we in this paper have no other choice but to say that expectations on audit reports and whatever is embedded in them look like they will is yet another engagement with futility, in going through the motions, for the purpose of registering that something is done and nothing else. The audit forecast at this time must be called what it is: it is grimacing and leads nowhere. Exxon and its partners will see that, because they’ve been in this game for over a century now, so they know what to present, what to paper for, and what to pretend is in order , even when many such issues are not. No one – no individual, no company, no group or agency – operates in business and environment for over a hundred years and eventually learns nothing.
This is what Guyana faces, as he stares at bills that would sink the Titanic, or stall a C-130 Hercules cargo plane on the ground, as there is so much pressure involved. Kaieteur News in its January 13th issue noted how this country is overseeing its oil business, “Only 10 GRA officials inspect Guyana’s billion dollar oil sector.” We say it’s right off the bat: 10 officials is not enough, and this is having due regard to their accumulated training and skills. This is why this is our point of view, some of which has been incorporated into the referenced article, and the rest is basic common sense.
Currently, there is more than US $ 6B in oil related expenses to check and analyze and review and draw reasonable conclusions. To set this on a domestic basis, that US $ 6B is equivalent to roughly twelve hundred billion Guyana dollars. However, this is being manipulated and explored, it has to be a high mountain of paper to be filtered through, to look at, not by any impractical piece by piece of paper, but by some sampling methodology encouraging, some representative aspect of the population. invoices and prices. We would expect a significant proportion of these invoices and prices to be executed with American and some other business. This alone puts our local audit team at a disadvantage, in terms of any cross-checking and robust follow-up work to find out the integrity of what Exxon and its people deliver.
Further, when we consider the audit team of the GRA to consist of 10 officers, this did an onerous job of presuming all the characteristics of those that can hardly be done. We say this because of what must be pure volume associated with what would be a task up, under normal circumstances, for a billion US dollars (GY $ 200B) , but here we are talking about US $ 6B, and with more coming daily, as activities are ongoing and not static. Our thinking in this paper is that 10 officers only allow surface skimming and edge searches, if that is the case. The work of this team is cut out for him, and one has to wonder to what extent he would or could get it, given the limited number of auditors assigned to this vast and sensitive task.
We in this society make good to always remember that we are responsible for those billions of dollars in expenses incurred by Exxon. Up to this time, the company has not dealt with us in a manner that speaks to an open and balanced partnership. With US $ 6B at stake, and Exxon wants to pledge all of it, we can’t afford to be complacent, or take this lightly. And yet, by all means, this is exactly how we go about things, with the results almost omitted. It’s that the US $ 6B is owned by us Guyanese.