(Kaieteur News) – Today continues where Column 190 left off, examining the egregious failures of omission and commission by ExxonMobil, Hess, CNOOC and their auditor, the cumulative effect of which is to present a distorted picture of the economics of their Stabroek Block operations. At the media briefing on EMGL’s 2025 financial statements, John A. Colling sought to explain the gap between the Government’s share of petroleum revenues and that of the oil companies by referring to “petroleum agreement accounting” and a “cost bank”. Yet neither term appears in the 2016 Petroleum Agreement, any annex thereto, or the financial statements of any of the three Stabroek Block partners. Readers sent to the accounts for an explanation will search in vain.

And far from showing seventy-five per cent of revenue going to costs, EMGL’s 2025 accounts show the opposite. Costs, including non-cash charges, amount to less than thirty per cent of revenue, while profit exceeds seventy per cent. Sent to the accounts to find cost recovery, the reader finds disproportionate profits instead.

Three companies, one Petroleum Agreement, one Block, one operator and one audit firm. The accounts should be comparable and consistent. They are not. On matters central to understanding the venture, they disclose different things, omit different things, and sometimes present the same reality in different ways. Where those differences are material, one or more must be wrong. It falls to the auditor who signed all three to explain what will not reconcile.