(Kaieteur News) – Public contracts are useful. But citizens also need a live record of licences, transfers, relinquishments, objections and decisions.

Guyana has already taken an important step by making several petroleum agreements publicly available.

That gives Guyana an advantage over Trinidad and Tobago, where contracts and many licence documents have long remained outside easy public view. Trinidad and Tobago’s own law required a petroleum register and Gazette notices for licence actions, but practice did not always live up to the law. Over time, citizens were left unable to easily track some of the country’s most important petroleum rights.