Dear Editor,
THE Ministry of Natural Resources writes in response to the article published in the August 21, 2026, edition of the Kaieteur News under the heading, “Solomon calls on President to release figures behind 39.8% profit-oil claim.” The article rests on a material misunderstanding of how Guyana’s share of petroleum revenue is calculated. Given the public importance of this matter, the Ministry sets out below, in plain terms, the correct figures and the reasoning behind them.
First, Guyana’s share of profit oil has never been 39.8 per cent. It is fifty per cent. It was fifty per cent in 2016, fifty per cent in 2019, and it is fifty per cent today. That has never changed. So where does 39.8 per cent come from? That number is not our share of the profit. It is our share of every single barrel produced, before costs are even taken out. It is a different number measuring a different thing, and mixing the two up is what caused the confusion.
Here is the simple math behind it. Out of every 100 barrels produced, about 20 go to the oil companies to pay back what they spent finding and developing the oil. That leaves about 80 barrels as profit. Guyana gets half of that profit, and half of 80 is 39.8. That is the entire calculation. No minister decides it. It comes straight out of the agreement signed in 2016, and anyone with a calculator can check it in seconds.
Next, the audit numbers the article raised are good news for Guyana, not bad news. It pointed to large sums under audit, about US$214 million, US$65 million, and US$19.6 billion, as if they were a problem. They are the opposite of a problem. When our auditors strike out a cost the oil companies tried to claim that money does not disappear. It simply stops being “cost oil” and becomes “profit oil” instead, and profit oil is split fifty-fifty. So, every dollar an audit disallows puts extra money in Guyana’s pocket, not less. Take the two audit cases already settled: US$279.5 million. If every cent of that had been thrown out, Guyana would gain about US$140 million from it, not lose a cent.
It also matters that three different words mean three different things. “Under review” simply means the auditors are still checking the expense. It is not an accusation of wrongdoing. The US$19.6 billion figure is about 36 per cent of all money invested so far, which is a measure of how thorough our audit is, not a measure of theft. “Disputed” means the auditors have questioned an expense and it has not yet been settled. “Disallowed” means it has been struck out for good, and as shown above, that outcome helps Guyana. Put together, the two matters actually resolved so far amount to about half of one per cent of the US$55 billion recovered by the companies. That is the true size of the issue, worth chasing to the last dollar, but nowhere near large enough to threaten our 39.8 per cent share.
Two myths deserve to be retired here as well. The first is that the 75 per cent cost-recovery cap meant the companies got 75 per cent of the oil. That is wrong. The cap only limits how fast they can be repaid. It never let them recover one dollar more than they actually spent. The second is that finishing cost recovery two years early was bad for Guyana. The opposite is true. It happened because production and prices were strong, and it means we reached the high-earning 39.8 per cent stage of the deal sooner rather than later. The 12.5 per cent share people criticised for years and the 39.8 per cent we get now comes from the very same clause; the low number was simply what you get while costs are still being repaid quickly.
What does this look like in real barrels and real dollars? The Stabroek Block is producing roughly 900,000 barrels a day. Guyana’s own cargoes have grown from about three million barrels a month to ten or twelve million barrels a month. On top of our share of profit oil, we also collect a 2 per cent royalty on every barrel sold, profit or no profit, and that alone brought in US$306 million in just the first six months of 2026. And because Guyana’s fifty per cent belongs to one owner, the State, while the companies must split their fifty per cent three ways, Guyana actually lifts more oil from these waters than any single oil company does.
We will keep publishing, every month, the production figures, the cargoes lifted, the royalty collected, and exactly how the entitlement percentage was calculated, so any citizen can check our arithmetic for themselves. On live audits still in progress, we will not negotiate in public. Announcing our position while a dispute is still open would only weaken our own hand and could cost the country money. Outcomes will be reported once they are final; that silence protects your interests; it does not hide anything from you.
The oil belongs to the people of Guyana. On that point, everyone agrees. What the people also deserve is an honest explanation of how their share is worked out, and a division sum is not evidence of a scandal. We welcome every question. We simply ask that the questions start from the right numbers.
Yours sincerely,
Ministry of Natural Resources