The Guyana Government is being urged to continue its transparency efforts regarding contracts with oil companies operating in its territory. This call was made by the Regional Director of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Francisco Paris.
According to the Director, the EITI Standard expects countries to disclose and publish its contracts. However, he hastened to add that “it’s not strictly mandatory because we understand in some context there are limitations based on commercial civilities attached to this country.”
He says that while public disclosure is not compulsory, it is advised that countries release their Petroleum Sharing Agreements as was done by Guyana.
“The recommendation is always to make those contracts the most transparent possible. We understand here, there has been precedence in the publication of the Exxon [contract] and all contracts. We would hope that it will be maintained and that policy will consolidate in the future,” he stated.
He also explained that this is important since Guyana’s EITI Report is due in April 2019, saying “our verification mechanism is flexible, it has a progressive scale, it encourages countries to keep doing the best to meet the requirements, to progress on that scale and when countries have gaps and weaknesses in meeting the requirements, the aim is identifying these acting on recommendations and improving.”
This is very necessary for Guyana to succeed.