Chris Ram
The Road to First Oil: Every Man, Woman and Child Must become Oil-minded Column 194 – The Resource Curse Begins on a Farm (Part 2) In Column 193, I argued that the controversy surrounding President Irfaan Ali’s farm at Long Creek is not fundamentally about agriculture. It is about governance in an oil-producing state. It…
Road to First Oil: Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-minded. Column No. 193 July 12, 2026 The Resource Curse has arrived – on a Farm Part I The story of the month, and perhaps of the year, has been President Irfaan Ali’s farm at Long Creek, an area off the Soesdyke-Linden Highway. Readers…
Road to First Oil – Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil Minded; Column 192 July 3, 2026 The financial, audit and regulatory weaknesses highlighted in this mini-series make for disturbing reading and raise serious concerns. Matters might have been very different had both the external auditors and the ministerial auditors taken a firmer…
Road to First Oil – Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil Minded; Column 191 July 1, 2026 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…
Road to First Oil – Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil Minded; Column 190 June 28, 2026 By Christopher Ram ExxonMobil Guyana Limited has now filed its financial statements for 2025, and with Hess’s and CNOOC’s already reviewed, we can now do the simple math of comparing the profits earned by and the…
Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded – Column 189: 13th June, 2026 Exxon’s 2025 Financial Statements – and What It Has Taken Out Overview ExxonMobil Guyana Limited this week filed its audited financial statements for the year ended 31st December 2025. Once again, the numbers are staggering: from a 45% interest in one…
Road to First Oil – Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-minded. Column No. 187: June 7, 2026 From Upper Mazaruni to Gas-to-Energy: A history of failures For almost every decade since Independence, Guyana has produced a project that promised transformation and delivered disappointment, and sometimes disaster. The 1970s had the Upper Mazaruni…
Road to First Oil: Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded — Column 186 — May 23, 2026 CNOOC Joins the Trillion Dollar Club Part 2: Hess in context — and CNOOC joins the party Introduction Last week’s column closed on a single fact: Hess Guyana’s accumulated surplus at 31 December 2025…
Road to First Oil: Every Man, Woman and Child in Guyana Must Become Oil-Minded – Column 185 – May 16, 2026 Beyond Stratospheric – 2025 Returns for Hess Introduction Hess Guyana Exploration Limited – a branch of Hess Guyana Exploration Ltd., a Cayman Islands-incorporated company and 30% stakeholder in the Stabroek Block – is once…
The Road to First oil: Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-minded – Column 184 May 9, 2026 Independence, Sovereignty and Exxon One day after the nationalisation of the bauxite industry, then President Forbes Burnham observed that Independence gave Guyana a new flag and wardrobe, but “not a new economy.” Fifteen years later, during…
