Sixth oil project

Aug 25, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The numbers for the sixth oil project in Guyana’s offshore waters are huge. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for this sixth project is 3636 pages, and it comes with a whopping US$12.9 billion price tag. This is where Guyanese have to show where they stand, how they are with this oil patrimony that they own. They can allow themselves to continue to sleep at the wheel, while one leader races ahead with more indebtedness for this country, possibly more danger for its environment and the Guyanese people, not to say anything about its neighbors.

Guyanese have 60 days to review just over 3600 pages of the EIA. On average, this requires reading about 60 pages of mostly dense, highly technical materials. This means that over 95 percent, probably as many as 99 percent, in Guyana’s population would not have the faintest idea as to what this US$12.9 billion represents and what it means to their lives. The first thing is more debt, or less money from their oil wealth, but both of which limits and drains the rich benefits of this oil from reaching Guyanese as it should. The second conspicuous note is that the cost of these projects spearheaded by ExxonMobil keeps increasing. As they are recklessly pushed with numbing regularity upon Guyanese by Vice President Jagdeo, the nation’s take from its oil is squeezed, and its obligations balloon. Considering the rate at which Jagdeo is smartly clicking his heels and going along with the wishes and visions of ExxonMobil, it is just a matter of time before the sum of Guyana’s bills owed to ExxonMobil could be in the US$100 billion range.

When the people who own this wealth should get a clear grasp of the extent of their wealth, watch as their government work diligently and wisely to equip this country with the level of capacity that it needs to manage this incomparably rich sector, they are falling behind. The reality is that Guyanese are falling behind with the flurry of projects approved by Jagdeo, and losing track of the blur of billions in expenses. Relative to the latter, Guyana lacks the expertise and technologies to keep abreast of the expenses of current projects, is losing some of the few that it has to ExxonMobil and others, but Vice President Jagdeo is the equivalent of a Formula One racecar driver run amok. The multibillion-dollar (American) oil projects increase under his watch, while Guyana has a tremendous distance to makeup in its monitoring and auditing of what ExxonMobil does offshore, and what it presents to us for payment.

It is reasonable to conclude that with more huge oil projects coming onstream, that this country will fall into a deeper and deeper hole regarding what ExxonMobil claims to be doing versus what it is actually doing. In other words, instead of Guyana making strides in catching up, it is losing ground. Unless there is an enormous infusion of reliable local and foreign skills in numerous areas with this oil, this is the grimness of the outlook into which Jagdeo drags the peoples of this country. It should be obvious to Guyanese that Jagdeo is more interested in being the darling of Darren Woods and the ExxonMobil crowd, than in pushing for the best interests of all Guyanese. This is what the sixth oil project and the others before it, as so swiftly and thoughtlessly approved by Jagdeo, mean at the core.

For their part, the Guyanese people have a hard choice to make. They can stand aside, stay silent, sit on their hands, and allow Vice President Jagdeo to play his costly games, in his haste to jump to the bidding of Mister Alistair Routledge and CEO, Darren Woods of ExxonMobil. Or, they can have the strength and spirit to stand up and stand in the path of Jagdeo to slow him down and instill some sense in this leader’s head. He just cannot go on like this, and that he will not be given the space to do as he pleases with this wealth. It is time for Guyanese to say: no more of this madness with this oil to fulfill the ego and ambitions of one tricky man.

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Editorial, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Leader, project, Races

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Sixth oil project

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