Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 16, 2019 Countryman
By Dennis Nichols
Some persons may be surprised to know that we, Guyanese, have had a lengthy and mixed relationship with oil – from coconut to engine. Now gushing from the rocky ocean depths, it’s Crude, coarse, black, and unrefined. Well, just about this time next year we may begin to glimpse its refined and financially-sweet side as our economy picks up and hopefully ‘barrels’ into overdrive in the not-too-distant future. The promise is tantalizingly close to becoming reality.
“There’s oil down there!” was Exxon’s shout, long before 2015 one would surmise, echoing the words of the early American prospectors heading west for the California rush, circa 1850, with ‘There’s gold in them thar hills!’ ringing in their ears. And black gold, like its yellow mineral relative, has long enthralled and served humankind.
Prior to 2015, the average Guyanese knew little of what lay, for millennia, just beyond our shores. Yet oil has been our balm, friend, and servant, for many a year. Few homes were without two or more of the following – coconut oil, crab oil, mustard oil, Canadian healing oil, cod liver oil, and castor oil; in the kitchen, olive oil, palm oil, Fryol or fry-oil; and for the mechanics/outdoors folk, machine oil, linseed oil, petrol, and lubricating oil. Even waste oil had its uses, as I recall staining and ‘polishing’ wood floors with it.
Spending the first eight years of my life on the East Coast of Demerara, I got acquainted first with coconut oil simply because many villagers made their own, cooked with it, and used it as an emollient for the skin. In those predominantly East Indian villages, the smell of coconut oil was rivalled (food-wise) only by that of curry, and to this day the combination of aromas takes me back to the kind of nostalgia I would readily recapture were it possible. But I never cared much for the others.
The memory of cod liver oil and castor oil, thick and slick, sliding from tongue to throat, choking and gagging, remains a dubious indictment of my parents’ disregard for the unrighteous hurt inflicted on their only son. Well, I guess, my sisters too. The distaste transcended those evil twins, and extended to all other household oils, except maybe cooking oil which expedience forced me to accept as a necessity, especially in the early nineteen-eighties when local palm oil proved an unpalatable substitute.
I still remember the odd scents emanating from mustard oil and Canadian healing oil, both of which my mother used to rub onto her weakening limbs following a debilitating stroke in 1966. Understanding the reason for their use mitigated my displeasure somewhat; not so with olive oil which my father, for reasons unfathomable to his children, would occasionally and liberally sprinkle on his food. Maybe it was to thwart the unattractive habit some of us had us pouncing of the inevitable left-over portion his knife and fork had avoided?
Then there was the negative connotation associated with certain categories of individuals described with the adjective ‘oily’ which caused me to distance myself even further from oil. In that context it meant they were at the very least, perceived to be dishonest, fawning, and slickly manipulative – lawyers, car salesmen, politicians, and the like. Add certain local businessmen and a handful of rogue police officers to the list.
But there’s oil, and then there’s oil, including the fossil fuel kind that is about to transform our slowly-fossilizing economy. Scientifically-speaking, it is any naturally occurring, unrefined product composed of hydrocarbon deposits and other organic materials. Wikipedia tells us its appearance ranges from thick and black to thin and brown, or almost colourless depending on where it is found. It also appears that the latter is of a higher quality, more easily extracted, and fetches higher prices. It’s what Exxon says Guyana has.
Unexpectedly frank news from an entity which, according to numerous reports, has been less forthcoming about some aspects of its operations. Many Guyanese are still very concerned about its environmental policies for example, due to our coastal vulnerability and the experiences we’ve had with companies like Omai.” (Recall the 1995 tailings dam breach that poured over four million cubic metres of cyanide-containing slurry into the Essequibo River) And who can forget the Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill, one of the worst ever, in 1989?
Criticism of ExxonMobil’s environmental record has been well-ventilated. The corporation is deemed a major polluter via greenhouse gases, airborne pollutants, and water pollutants, and is said to commit a very small percentage of its profits to researching alternative energy, which an advocacy organization, Ceres, reported was less than other leading oil companies.
A Los Angeles Times article in 2015 headlined ‘Big oil braced for global warming while it fought regulations’ quoted Mobil engineers as saying in their design specifications that “An estimated rise in water level, due to global warming, of 0.5 metres, may be assumed” for the 25-year life of the Sable gas field project in Alaska. That was back in 1996. (I don’t know if it’s a typo, but 0.5m is about 19 inches)
One year later according to the New York Times, the company, which later merged in 1998 with Exxon to become ExxonMobil, (the biggest corporate merger at that time) said in an advertisement, “Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil. Scientists cannot predict with certainty if temperatures will increase, by how much, and where changes will occur.”
The corporation’s experts may be telling only selected parts of its oil tale, and Guyanese could be the worse off for it. But it’s all relative, and even if we end up getting relatively shafted, our economy may still take off faster than a jet plane skimming away from CJIA and heading to the stratosphere. The opposite alternative is too unbearable to contemplate. So, let’s just wait and see how ExxonMobil’s love of oil and its humongous profits will rub off on our country’s economy, and hopefully on each of us.
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THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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