As the Energy Conference opened up yesterday, Guyana failed to send a public message to Exxon’s boss who is in attendance. With the worst oil contract in the history of the world that gives Guyana 14.5% of all gross revenues while Exxon gets 85.5% to cover expenses and profits, the Guyana leaders were silent, although they had promised during the election campaign to review and renegotiate the oil contract. During the election, they were telling the voters they would “review and renegotiate” and behind the voters’ backs, both major parties were making a solemn promise to Exxon that they will not renegotiate. They failed to redeem themselves at the Energy Conference and the Exxon boss must have been smiling at how docile we are.
Using phrases such as “sustainable development” means nothing and conflicts with Government’s strategy of “drill, baby, drill.” They are getting all the oil and gas out as quickly as possible when the royalty is low, the profit is low, we are paying the oil companies’ taxes, we are not auditing expense accounts, and have no monitoring capacity. How smart is that? Exxon and friends must be following the Guyanese adage, “When you ketch a packoo, burst its back.” In this case, the working poor of Guyana are the packoos, living in perpetual poverty.
Our Government has no depletion policy; we have no proper guarantees of adequate insurance when a large number of wells will be in operation concurrently and the risks will be greater; flaring continues and we get a small freck for it; we fail to audit expense accounts of oil companies; there is no ring fencing; and the list of poor governance of oil is long. Our Government granted a 23-year EPA agreement instead of 5 years for Liza 1, and it took court action of vigilant Guyanese environmentalists to overturn that.
So, when our leaders say “Guyana is committed to environmental pre-servation…Our development strategy is built on a low carbon pathway,” how do they plan to operationalize that? What the heck do they mean by that when they are hounding the environmentalists and criticizing these Civic Society groups who want to help them by asking the hard questions? Our dear Lord put the rain forests there. That was no magic act and genius leadership of politicians who now claim credit for “low carbon” strategies. My friend Suresh said, “there was so much hot air being spewed there, that could have triggered climate change.”
Ms. Mottley talked about “inconvenient truths” but did not have the courage to sound a warning to the Exxon boss that flaring is unacceptable and that any oil spill could decimate the economies of CARICOM territories. Several Civil Society members had lobbied her office asking her to raise that issue in her speech.
The Ghanaian President should be commended for saying that mechanisms should be put in place to minimize the flaring of natural gas offshore Guyana. He also said oil resources should be used for the development of citizens explaining that his country enacted legislation to cater for the maximum involvement of its citizens in the exploitation of the country’s resources.
Contrast that with Guyana where government railroads the NRF Act, Amaila, and gas-to-shore projects, and where party operatives and bloggers are unleashed to criticize those who dare to have independent thinking about oil and gas. We wish the Conference well, but we are watching closely because “It’s Our Wealth, Our Country.”
Sincerely,
Dr. Jerry Jailall