Guyana Is Leaving Millions On The Table With Exxon While It Searches For A Company To Salvage The MV Barima

By NAN Business Editor, News Americas

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Mon. Aug. 3, 2026: As Guyana’s Maritime Administration Department scrambles to find a qualified contractor to pull the MV Barima from the ocean floor, the government is sitting on a separate, far larger unresolved account: millions of dollars in disputed ExxonMobil cost-oil audits that the International Monetary Fund says Guyana needs to stop letting drag on.

The contrast is hard to ignore. On one hand, a government asking marine salvage companies to submit proposals limited to ten pages, on a deadline more than three weeks out, just to recover a ferry that killed at least 73 people and left 30 more missing and presumed dead. On the other, a government that has allowed a years-long dispute over Exxon’s own cost accounting to sit unresolved, even as the IMF’s latest Article IV mission all but pleaded with Guyanese officials to move faster.

The Exxon money still on the table

An audit conducted by IHS Markit, covering the period 1999 to 2017, found $214.4 million in Exxon-claimed costs that were either ineligible for cost recovery or lacked adequate supporting documentation. A second audit, covering a later period and carried out by SGS in partnership with Martindale Consultants and Guyanese firms Ramdihal and Haynes, Eclisar Financial and Vitality Accounting and Consultancy, remains under review.

In its Staff Concluding Statement released Friday, the IMF urged Guyana to resolve both disputes “in a timely manner,” including through arbitration where necessary, citing “important fiscal and governance implications.” The Fund also called on Guyana to keep strengthening its capacity to audit its own rapidly expanding oil and gas sector, and separately pushed for stronger public procurement practices as government spending continues to climb.

That is real money potentially owed to a country that just weeks ago couldn’t get a $12.7 million replacement ferry into service after three years, and is now asking private companies to volunteer for the job of recovering the vessel that killed dozens because the government’s own agencies weren’t positioned to do it themselves.

The salvage search, under pressure

MARAD’s Expression of Interest notice, issued Saturday, came only after intensifying pressure: swelling protests from civil society activists, University of Guyana students, and the political opposition, following the swearing-in of the five-member international Commission of Inquiry. Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed credited the reversal directly to public pressure. “The Government has finally buckled under the pressure of the people,” he said. “This is a victory for every citizen who refused to remain silent.”

But Mohamed also flagged what the August 14 deadline actually means: it is only the deadline for companies to submit proposals, not for the salvage itself to begin. At that pace, he warned, the vessel may not actually be recovered until sometime in September, nearly two months after it went down.

Contractors are being asked to detail how they’ll protect forensic evidence for the Commission’s investigation while working in near-zero visibility, strong currents, and 13 to 15 meters of water, some 28 nautical miles off Guyana’s coast. French military divers who assisted in the earlier search and recovery effort had already reported zero visibility and a maze of ropes and hammocks trapped inside the sunken vessel.

The same pattern, different ledger

Whether it’s a multimillion-dollar oil dispute or a $12.7 million ferry sitting idle for three years, the through-line is the same: money and resources Guyana has access to, or is owed, not being pursued or deployed with urgency, while ordinary Guyanese, and now grieving families, pay the price of the delay. The IMF’s own language, that these audits carry “important fiscal and governance implications,” could just as easily describe the government’s handling of its own maritime infrastructure over the past three years.

NewsAmericasNow will continue tracking both the salvage operation and Guyana’s response to the IMF’s findings.

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