By BERT WILKINSON
Associated Press

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - Guyana's State Assets Recovery Agency says it has launched an investigation into whether corruption played a role in the previous government's 2015 decision to award two oil blocks to little-known companies days after ExxonMobil signaled it had found large deposits of oil and gas.

Agency Deputy Director Aubrey Retemeyer said Wednesday that the decision came less than a week before elections and awarded the blocks to two firms not known as oil producers anywhere else on the globe.

Retemeyer said authorities want to find out who profited from the sales of the Kaieteur and Canje oil blocks that lie right next to the Stabroek block where U.S. giant ExxonMobil has so far found 13 wells flush with oil and gas as it rushes to begin production as early as November.

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