CGX Energy will help pay Guyana's legal bills incurred in seeking a solution to the maritime dispute with Suriname.
The company's oil rig was forcibly ejected by two Surinamese gunboats from its drilling position in Guyana's exclusive economic zone back in July 2000.
President Bharrat Jagdeo made the disclosure about the CGX financial input when he spoke with reporters yesterday at the Office of the President. He said that though the case before the UN arbitral tribunal would take about three years to be determined, he expects that a ruling on the provisional measures Guyana had requested should take a matter of months.
This would allow the parties to co-operate in exploiting the maritime resources in the disputed area.
There are methods for hearing the provisional measures quickly and the country's legal team is working on the presentation of these issues which should be heard shortly.
He added that budgetary allocations would be made and he expects that the bulk of the bills would come due towards the end of the three-year period.
Earlier Jagdeo said that Suriname's President Ronald Venetiaan had raised the maritime border issue at the St Kitts meeting and had sought to blame Guyana for the lack of progress in the bilateral discussions.He said he had refuted Suriname's assertions and had recounted for the other heads of government the circumstances which led Guyana to invoke the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to get a final and binding determination of its maritime border with Suriname.
Jagdeo said that he also spoke with President Venetiaan and had reassured him that Guyana had acted not only within its right but also in accordance with the spirit of Caricom.
He said his conversation "leads me to believe that Suriname will honour its obligations under the Law of the Sea convention, respond to our statement of claim and accede to the deliberations on this matter."
On his return to Suriname, Venetiaan told reporters that his government would be challenging the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal to hear Guyana's claim since Guyana had not allowed the bilateral negotiations sufficient time to arrive at an agreement and that it had not made any practical arrangements for co-operation in exploiting the maritime resources. A final ground of the challenge is that some aspects of the border dispute do not fall within the competence of the arbitral tribunal.
Guyana filed its claim with the UN under the Convention of the Law of the Sea on February 24 and has sought a number of provisional measures which among other things would prevent Suriname from harassing Guyanese fishermen operating in the Corentyne River as well as preventing Suriname from hindering any exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbon resources in the area Suriname is claiming.