February, 02 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Exxon's Exploitative Oil Deal in Guyana Will Deprive the Country of Up to US$55 Billion
Exxon's exploitative oil deal with Guyana will cause the country to lose up to US$55 billion, according to a new Global Witness investigation based on an OpenOil analysis.
WASHINGTON
Exxon's exploitative oil deal with Guyana will cause the country to lose up to US$55 billion, according to a new Global Witness investigation based on an OpenOil analysis.
The new report, Signed Away, shows how the oil major used aggressive tactics and threats to pressure inexperienced Guyanese officials to sign the deal for the Stabroek license--one of the world's largest oil finds in years.
"It is shocking that Exxon would seek such an exploitative deal in one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest countries," said Jonathan Gant, Senior Campaigner at Global Witness.
"Guyana's urgent development needs--such as building new hospitals and schools, and protecting itself from rising sea levels that put 90% of the population at risk--will not be met by Exxon walking away with an extra US$55 billion in its back pocket."
Exxon's original license for the Stabroek oil block--off Guyana's Caribbean coast--dates back to 1999. However, in April 2016, after Exxon found oil in the block, the company set out to pressure Guyanese officials to sign a rushed, new contract to renew its oil license - knowing that its existing license was running out.
Evidence seen by Global Witness shows how Exxon paid for a lavish trip for Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman to visit its Texas headquarters during the Stabroek negotiations. The trip included a first-class flight, limousine transportation, and an extravagant dinner at an exclusive restaurant.
This may violate Exxon's internal policy, stating that staff should consider whether gifts to officials may "improperly influence pending business decisions." Exxon denies any wrongdoing, saying it is "committed to the highest standards of business conduct, and we follow all local laws and regulations," while Trotman has said he saw nothing wrong with travelling to Texas on Exxon's dime.
The investigation also reveals how Trotman knew Exxon would soon announce its oil find results, but rushed to sign the deal anyway, despite the advice of experts.
Trotman may have also suffered from a possible conflict of interest as he has been close political allies with one of Exxon's Guyanese lawyers. The lawyer - Nigel Hughes - has denied he represented Exxon on the deal, but admitted that his firm has represented Exxon since 2009 and that he has worked for the company on other matters.
Global Witness does not have evidence that Trotman's Stabroek negotiations were influenced - unwittingly or otherwise - by his expensive Texas trip or his ties to Hughes. But the relationship between Trotman, Hughes, and Exxon should be investigated.
Global Witness calls on Guyanese officials to investigate the Exxon deal and the ministers involved, and to demand a new, fair license. Global Witness also calls on US authorities, including the State Department, to support renegotiation.
A fiscal study conducted by the expert analysts at OpenOil - commissioned by Global Witness and released alongside this investigation - estimates Guyana is set to lose an average of US$1.3 billion per year. Recovering this money through renegotiating a fair deal could boost the country's annual US$1.4 billion budget.
In letters to Global Witness and OpenOil, Exxon disputed OpenOil's findings, saying that they did not account for Guyana's "frontier" status as an oil producer. However, the company did not comment on the detail of OpenOil's fiscal analysis. Trotman also told Global Witness that getting maximum revenues from Exxon was not the government's main aim and the country needed Exxon to help protect its borders from Venezuela. Guyana's Foreign Minister Carl Greenidge argued that any analysis must focus not only on financial data from international oil deals but on Guyana's strategic considerations and the risk to Exxon of military conflict in the area.
OpenOil studied reports of the financial terms of government oil contracts around the world, including by the International Monetary Fund. These reports show that, based on international data, Guyana is receiving a lower profit share from Exxon than many other international oil deals.
The Stabroek deal is not the only questionable license that Exxon obtained in Guyana. Evidence seen by Global Witness also shows that the two other Guyanese oil licenses - called Kaieteur and Canje - raise red flags for corruption. They were initially awarded to companies with limited experience that flipped shares of their licenses to Exxon before doing any real work.
The official who awarded Kaieteur and Canje - former Natural Resources Minister Robert Persaud - issued the licenses just before leaving office in 2015 and has shown an extraordinary degree of ignorance about the ultimate owners of the winning companies. The companies who initially obtained Kaieteur and Canje have denied wrongdoing, as have Exxon and Persaud.
"Exxon's Kaieteur and Canje licenses raise corruption red flags and should be investigated," said Gant. "Given these problems and the threats to Guyana posed by the global climate emergency, Guyana should renegotiate the Stabroek license and then ban all new drilling in the country."
Global Witness calls on Guyanese officials to:
- Renegotiate Exxon's Stabroek license to get the revenue Guyana needs to build a strong economy following the country's Green State Development Strategy.
- Ban all drilling and extraction in areas other than where oil has already been found to help fight the climate emergency.
- Investigate the process by which the Stabroek license was negotiated.
- Investigate officials and companies involved in the Kaieteur and Canje licenses to determine if there were any irregularities in the awarding of those blocks.
Global Witness also calls on the US State Department to encourage Exxon to renegotiate with Guyana.
Notes to Editors:
See the full report Signed Away: How Exxon's exploitative deal deprived Guyana of up to US$55 billion here.
Exxon's license was analyzed by the financial experts at OpenOil. A full version of the report - commissioned by Global Witness and entitled How much revenue will Guyana lose out on in Stabroek? - can be found here.
For Exxon's April 2015 Guidelines to conflicts of interest policy, directorships policy, and gifts and entertainment policy, visit https://careers.exxonmobil.com/-/media/files/offer-letter-attachments/canguidelinestocoidirectorshipsgepolicyenglishapr2015.pdf.
Many of the world's worst environmental and human rights abuses are driven by the exploitation of natural resources and corruption in the global political and economic system. Global Witness is campaigning to end this. We carry out hard-hitting investigations, expose these abuses, and campaign for change. We are independent, not-for-profit, and work with partners around the world in our fight for justice.
LATEST NEWS
US Led 'Unprecedented' Surge in Global Military Spending in 2024
"As governments increasingly prioritize military security, often at the expense of other budget areas, the economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come," said one expert.
Apr 28, 2025
Military spending worldwide soared to $2.718 trillion last year, meaning it "has increased every year for a full decade, going up by 37% between 2015 and 2024," according to an annual report released Monday.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has tracked conflict, disarmament, and weapons for nearly six decades. Its 2024 spending report states that "for the second year in a row, military expenditure increased in all five of the world's geographical regions, reflecting heightened geopolitical tensions across the globe."
In a Monday statement, Xiao Liang, a researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, highlighted that "over 100 countries around the world raised their military spending in 2024."
"It was the highest year-on-year increase since the end of the Cold War."
"This was really unprecedented... It was the highest year-on-year increase since the end of the Cold War," Liang told Agence France-Press, while acknowledging that there may have been larger jumps during the Cold War but Soviet Union data is not available.
Liang warned that "as governments increasingly prioritize military security, often at the expense of other budget areas, the economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come."
The United States—whose Republican lawmakers are currently cooking up a plan to give even more money to a Pentagon that's never passed an audit—led all countries, with $997 billion in military spending. The report points out that the U.S. not only allocated "3.2 times more than the second-largest spender," but also "accounted for 37% of global military expenditure in 2024 and 66% of spending by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members."
In the second spot was China, with an estimated $314 billion in spending. Nan Tian, director of the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, raised the alarm about spending in Asia.
"Major military spenders in the Asia-Pacific region are investing increasing resources into advanced military capabilities," said Tian. "With several unresolved disputes and mounting tensions, these investments risk sending the region into a dangerous arms-race spiral."
In third place was Russia, with an estimated $149 billion in spending. Russia remains at war after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Rounding out the top five were Germany ($88.5 billion) and India ($86.1 billion).
They were followed by the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, France, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Poland, Italy, and Australia. The report says that "together, the top 15 spenders in 2024 accounted for 80% of global military spending ($2,185 billion) and for 79% of the total increase in spending over the year. All 15 increased their military spending in 2024."
"The two largest year-on-year percentage increases among this group were in Israel (+65%) and Russia (+38%), highlighting the effect of major conflicts on spending trends in 2024," the publication continues. Israel has been engaged in a U.S.-backed military assault on the Gaza Strip—globally condemned as genocide—since October 2023.
"Russia once again significantly increased its military spending, widening the spending gap with Ukraine," noted SIPRI researcher Diego Lopes da Silva. "Ukraine currently allocates all of its tax revenues to its military. In such a tight fiscal space, it will be challenging for Ukraine to keep increasing its military spending."
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced an upcoming three-day truce to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for an immediate monthlong cease-fire.
All NATO members boosted military spending last year, which SIPRI researcher Jade Guiberteau Ricard said was "driven mainly by the ongoing Russian threat and concerns about possible U.S. disengagement within the alliance."
"It is worth saying that boosting spending alone will not necessarily translate into significantly greater military capability or independence from the USA," the expert added. "Those are far more complex tasks."
Another SIPRI researcher, Lorenzo Scarazzato, highlighted that "for the first time since reunification Germany became the biggest military spender in Western Europe, which was due to the €100 billion special defense fund announced in 2022."
"The latest policies adopted in Germany and many other European countries suggest that Europe has entered a period of high and increasing military spending that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future," Scarazzato said.
As for the Middle East, SIPRI researcher Zubaida Kari said that "despite widespread expectations that many Middle Eastern countries would increase their military spending in 2024, major rises were limited to Israel and Lebanon."
In addition to slaughtering at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past nearly 19 months, Israel has killed thousands of people in Lebanon while allegedly targeting the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Kari said that elsewhere in the region, "countries either did not significantly increase spending in response to the war in Gaza or were prevented from doing so by economic constraints."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Not Just for the Battlefield: Rights Group Warns of Dystopian World Where Killer Robots Reign
"To avoid a future of automated killing, governments should seize every opportunity to work toward the goal of adopting a global treaty on autonomous weapons systems," according to the author of the report.
Apr 28, 2025
In a report published Monday, a leading human rights group calls for international political action to prohibit and regulate so-called "killer robots"—autonomous weapons systems that select targets based on inputs from sensors rather than from humans—and examines them in the context of six core principles in international human rights law.
In some cases, the report argues, an autonomous weapons system may simply be incompatible with a given human rights principle or obligation.
The report, co-published by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, comes just ahead of the first United Nations General Assembly meeting on autonomous weapons systems next month. Back in 2017, dozens of artificial intelligence and robotics experts published a letter urging the U.N. to ban the development and use of killer robots. As drone warfare has grown, those calls have continued.
"To avoid a future of automated killing, governments should seize every opportunity to work toward the goal of adopting a global treaty on autonomous weapons systems," said the author behind the report, Bonnie Docherty, a senior arms adviser at Human Rights Watch and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, in a statement on Monday.
According to the report, which includes recommendations on a potential international treaty, the call for negotiations to adopt "a legally binding instrument to prohibit and regulate autonomous weapons systems" is supported by at least 129 countries.
Drones relying on an autonomous targeting system have been used by Ukraine to hit Russian targets during the war between the two countries, The New York Timesreported last year.
In 2023, the Pentagon announced a program, known as the Replicator initiative, which involves a push to build thousands of autonomous drones. The program is part of the U.S. Defense Department's plan to counter China. In November, the watchdog group Public Citizen alleged that Pentagon officials have not been clear about whether the drones in the Replicator project would be used to kill.
A senior Navy admiral recently toldBloomberg that the program is "alive and well" under the Department of Defense's new leadership following U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Docherty warned that the impact of killer robots will stretch beyond the traditional battlefield. "The use of autonomous weapons systems will not be limited to war, but will extend to law enforcement operations, border control, and other circumstances, raising serious concerns under international human rights law," she said in the statement
When it comes to the right to peaceful assembly under human rights law, which is important in the context of law enforcement exercising use force, "autonomous weapons systems would be incompatible with this right," according to the report.
Killer robots pose a threat to peaceful assembly because they "would lack human judgment and could not be pre-programmed or trained to address every situation," meaning they "would find it challenging to draw the line between peaceful and violent protesters."
Also, "the use or threat of use of autonomous weapons systems, especially in the hands of abusive governments, could strike fear among protesters and thus cause a chilling effect on free expression and peaceful assembly," per the report.
Killer robots would also contravene the principle of human dignity, according to the report, which establishes that all humans have inherent worth that is "universal and inviolable."
"The dignity critique is not focused on the systems generating the wrong outcomes," the report states. "Even if autonomous weapons systems could feasibly make no errors in outcomes—something that is extremely unlikely—the human dignity concerns remain, necessitating prohibitions and regulations of such systems."
"Autonomous weapon systems cannot be programmed to give value to human life, do not possess emotions like compassion that can generate restraint to violence, and would rely on processes that dehumanize individuals by making life-and-death decisions based on software and data points," Docherty added.
In total, the report considers the right to life; the right to peaceful assembly; the principle of human dignity; the principle of nondiscrimination; the right to privacy; and the right to remedy.
The report also lists cases where it's more ambiguous whether autonomous weapons systems would violate a certain right.
The right to privacy, for example, protects individuals from "arbitrary or unlawful" interferences in their personal life. According to the report, "The development and use of autonomous weapons systems could violate the right because, if they or any of their component systems are based on AI technology, their development, testing, training, and use would likely require mass surveillance."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Absolute Insanity': Right-Wing Activist Asks If Trump Will Suspend Habeas Corpus to Expel More Migrants
"Anyone advocating for suspending the writ of habeas corpus because they don't like due process is spitting on the legacy of those who fought and died for this country and our Constitution," said one policy expert.
Apr 28, 2025
With the Trump administration making space in the press briefing room for right-wing podcasters and other conservative "new media" content creators, viewers of briefings since President Donald Trump took office have seen his press secretary field questions about the Ukrainian president's clothing during an Oval Office meeting, compliments about Trump's "fitness plan," and attacks on reporters who have long reported from the White House.
On Monday, the first question of the briefing was derided by one Democratic politician as "absolute insanity," as right-wing commentator and influencer Rogan O'Handley—also known by the handle "DC Draino"—was given the floor to ask whether Trump will suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to circumvent several judges' rulings and "start shipping out" undocumented immigrants without due process.
"Can you please let us know if and when the Trump administration is planning to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to circumvent these radical judges?" asked O'Handley after accusing federal judges of "thwarting [Trump's] agenda with an unprecedented number of national injunctions."
O'Handley shared some familiar right-wing talking points—saying federal judges have provided "more due process to violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua illegal aliens than they did for U.S. citizens who peacefully protested on January 6"—as he suggested the administration should abandon the legal principle under which people who are detained are permitted to challenge their imprisonment in court.
"You have got to be kidding me," wrote Sara McGee, a Democrat running for the Texas House of Representatives.
His question came amid escalating attacks by Republicans and the administration on judges who have ruled against the White House. A Republican congressman said last month that Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. should be impeached for issuing an order against Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel hundreds of undocumented immigrants to El Salvador. Last week, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping a migrant evade arrest by escorting him out of her courtroom.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, noted that O'Handley and press secretary Karoline Leavitt also repeatedly cited at least one statistic that was "completely made up"—that the Biden administration allowed 15 million undocumented immigrants into the United States—as they suggested Trump should take legal steps to force all of them out of the country without the input of the judicial system.
The undocumented population in the U.S. in 2023 was 11.7 million, according to the Center for Migration Studies, down from the peak of 12 million, which was reached in 2008.
"They've been pushing this on the right for about a week now," said Reichlin-Melnick of the push to suspend habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants. "Anyone advocating for suspending the writ of habeas corpus because they don't like due process is spitting on the legacy of those who fought and died for this country and our Constitution."
Leavitt responded to O'Handley's question by saying while she has "not heard such discussions take place... the president and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies" to continue expelling people from the United States.
Several cases of undocumented immigrants who have been sent to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center have made national headlines in recent weeks, including that of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia; Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old who federal agents acknowledged was not who they were looking for during a raid; and Andry Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist who was accused of being a gang member solely because he had tattoos.
O'Handley's suggestion that the bedrock legal principle be suspended for undocumented immigrants—hundreds of whom have already been forced out of the country without due process—came ahead of Trump's scheduled signing of two new immigration-related executive orders.
One would direct the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to publish a list of sanctuary cities and states—those where local law enforcement are directed not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to arrest undocumented immigrants.
The other, Leavitt said, would "unleash America's law enforcement to pursue criminals." The New York Postreported that the order would be related to providing local police agencies with military equipment and legal support for officers accused of wrongdoing.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular