This is the regard ExxonMobil has for Guyanese

Sep 23, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – If any Guyanese entertained ideas that they featured highly in the considerations of the movers and shakers at ExxonMobil, they had better come to their senses quickly. The chiefs at ExxonMobil are so disrespectful and dismissive of Guyanese that they have not even spent the time, effort, and money to get the clearest picture of what could be the impact of a bad oil spill at the company’s offshore Guyana operations.

In more ways than one, we believe that what the company is saying to itself is why waste time and money on nonwhite people.  Why go to the effort for people who are poor and backward? Why do anything when Guyanese leaders have all but sworn allegiance to the commands of ExxonMobil, and completely delivered their country to this predatory US company.

There is a shocking casualness about how ExxonMobil approaches such things as full safety studies for its Guyana operations, with related financial impacts on Guyana.  A spokesperson for the group that has conducted several Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for ExxonMobil had this to say at a recent public consultation on the sixth oil project: “I can’t say because it’s not part of the EIA. We haven’t done an economic model of what the maximum economic impact would be. What we focus on with the unplanned events chapter is identifying what the risk of those scenarios are so we can put the right measures in place to manage that risk and so that really comes down to the oil spill response plan.”

A summary in plain English of what that is saying is this: the scope of the EIA did not extend to what a massive oil spill would cost in concrete terms.  In addition, the part about “unplanned events” confirms what ExxonMobil is comfortable doing offshore, which is to push and push the risk envelope past the recommended points.  Of course, an immense oil spill is usually a sudden (“unplanned event”) rupture or blowout that has incalculable consequences for the host nation, where oil operations are going on.  Further, “identifying what the risk of those scenarios are” is another giveaway because it is ExxonMobil that gets to decide how much weight or probability of occurrence it is going to place on a particular oil spill set of circumstances.  If the probability of such an oil spill is held as low to very low (almost nonexistent) in ExxonMobil’s calculations, then its models are only as good as what is put into them.  In other words, if garbage numbers are put into the risk model, then it is garbage that comes out as the result.

This is how ExxonMobil is playing with Guyana’s pristine environment, the current livelihoods of the Guyanese people, and the future prosperity of more than Guyana from its wealth.  This is how ExxonMobil also lightly takes the possible negatives from a major oil spill that could inflict unprecedented damage on the economies of many of Guyana’s neighbours.  Because regional economies are so dependent on tourism, meaning their waters and beaches, a comprehensive, insightful, and credible study would have made sense, and manifested great respect for Guyana and its regional neighbors.  We at this publication do not think that ExxonMobil would have been so reckless, or so thoughtless, to attempt the same in Europe, or anyplace else where the population was less coloured and more heavily white.

On a separate note, the EIA spokesperson at the public consultation noted that should there be a spill that Guyanese could submit claim to be made whole.  This would cover loss of compensation, or assistance to injured citizens so that they can get back to where they were before any such spill.  Nothing was mentioned about what recourse citizens would have for health effects, or that the claims process could be a nightmare for those who are at a loss about what struck them, and what to do.  The catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska is a case in point.  It took years for many Alaskans to be compensated, while ExxonMobil strung them along.  When we contemplate all these things, ExxonMobil more and more comes over as a less trustworthy partner, and one all for its own interests.

• commands, dismissive, disrespectful, Editorial, Guyanese