Kaieteur News

GEORGETOWN
EnergiesNet.com 05 23 2022

A perusal of now gazetted notification of receipts of Royalty and Profits received by Guyana under the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) demonstrates in a pellucid fashion the volatility of the prices of oil and the apparent ad hoc manner in which government collects its profit.

This much can be gleaned from the now public document dated April 25, 2022 and accounts for the period March 2020 to the end of February this year. According to the document on March 3 last year, the government collected US$50 part payment for a lift of one million barrels of oil that it had uplifted weeks earlier on February 5. The remainder or final payment for that lift was made a few days later on March 9, 2021, some US$61M.

Outlining in the government notice that the reports prior to January 1, of this year as non mandatory and only for informational purposes, it was noted that in March 2020, Government collected US$54.9M for a shipment of crude that it uplifted the previous month on February 17, 2020. The next payment of profit oil was not had until June when government received US$35M for its shipment uplifted the previous month.

The next tranche of profit that Guyana collected in 2020 was not had until months later in August when US$46M was paid into the Natural Resources Fund, held in the New York Federal Reserve Bank. That payment was for a shipment uplifted earlier that same month on August 9, 2020 and the payment was received on August 24. That represented the final set of profit collected for that year since the next payment to be received was not had until January 11, 2021—some US$49.3M—for a shipment that had been uplifted in early December the previous year.

Three months later on March 3, 2021, the sum of US$50 (G$10,000) was paid over as a partial payment on a shipment of one million barrels of oil, the final payment of some US$61M.

Two months later on May 14, 2021, Guyana collected $US62.6M. Payments collected by the Guyana government were at the highest for that year in July and October, when US$79.6M was collected for a shipment collected earlier that month and US$80.3M in October for a lift collected in September that year.

The final payment of profits received for 2021 was had on Christmas Eve when some US$73.6M was deposited into the fund. On February 28 this year, Guyana received its highest ever earnings on a single shipment when US$95.9M was deposited into the fund. Altogether, government collected a total of US$638,520,554 in profit in 11 tranches for the reporting period from 2020 to February of this year. It was noted however that profit oil receipts are derived from Government of Guyana lifts of oil earned as profit. As it relates to royalties, these are paid on a quarterly basis, 30 days following the end of each quarter.
For the period April 28, 2020 to January 27, 2022, Guyana received US$81 million in royalty payments, from the two percent deal it signed with US oil major, ExxonMobil, back in 2016.

The information was released by the Ministry of Finance and was presented to members of the National Assembly on Tuesday last.

kaieteurnewsonline.com 05 20 2022