Pressuring and duping

Nov 29, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The streams of phone calls were constant. The emails were never-ending. The pressures intense and relentless. This is a glimpse of the determination and strength of the people leading the charge on the ExxonMobil side of the then oil contract negotiation with Guyana’s representatives.

ExxonMobil went into overdrive, threw all its considerable weight, to get a contract signed and sealed with the then Coalition Government in 2016. The Coalition of President David Granger held out for a time, then it collapsed under the remorseless pressures from ExxonMobil. The discussions became so tense that President Granger also got involved, and he too became a victim of the American oil company’s bruising encounters. He yielded and ExxonMobil walked away with a contract that is a felony, a corporate leprosy.

Little of this has come out in the book titled “From Destiny to Prosperity” written by Raphael Trotman, the minister who signed the contract on behalf of this country. The pressures applied by ExxonMobil were part of the damning conclusions compiled by Clyde and Co. which was engaged to examine the circumstances leading up to the signing of the ExxonMobil contract.

The Clyde and Co Report not only documented some of the details of the pressures applied by ExxonMobil on the Granger Government, but it also noted how Guyana was duped by the people in a ruthless company. What was revealed was how the opportunists and schemers at ExxonMobil are quite capable of pushing a wheelchair bound person in front of a speeding express train. The people at ExxonMobil duped, conned, and cooked the Granger Government, subjecting it to full body burns. To date Guyana is still to recover, limps along under an even shakier, sloppier set of people in the PPP/C Government.

ExxonMobil duped the Coalition Government when it withheld vital details relating to the discovery of oil in the Liza-2 well. This was of the greatest materiality to Guyana, as it had many elements that may have changed the entire complexion of the contract negotiations, and in Guyana’s favour. What ExxonMobil did was low, cheap, and obscene. It withheld discovery information to the significant disadvantage of Guyana, while enriching itself substantially for decades to come. This is the kind of partner that ExxonMobil is, the class of oil company that Guyana’s Vice President Bharat Jagdeo now fiercely defends in his own turn. It certainly is mysterious that if Jagdeo is prioritizing Guyana’s interests that he sees honesty in ExxonMobil. This is the vile corporate entity that has robbed Guyanese of their birthright, and which Guyana’s Jagdeo, a former president himself, sees fit to embrace tightly as a trusted presence in this country.

One cannot help looking back and thinking of how Cheddi Jagan or Forbes Burnham would have reacted first to ExxonMobil’s pressures, and second to the disclosure of how the company tricked Guyana. There is no question that when the pressures came from ExxonMobil, both would have smelled a rat, a dead one, as concealed in the company’s hand. Further, all hell would have broken loose when they discovered how ExxonMobil played a cruel game with them, through its delay in sharing the Liza-2 discovery information with Guyana. ExxonMobil would have been made to pay the steepest price for its cunning. Both of those Guyanese warriors are now gone, but there is Jagdeo to carry the torch that has been passed to him.

Frankly, it could be asserted that Jagdeo is the worst person to be around the inheritance of the Guyanese people, the weakest representing Guyana before ExxonMobil. If Jagdeo has one drop of Guyanese blood in him, he would look at the people of ExxonMobil with anger and revulsion. But Jagdeo now joins with the Americans to continue the duping of Guyanese, with his skirting around fighting for more from ExxonMobil. When he talks about sanctity of contract and better contract management, those are his versions of duping Guyanese. A contract built and signed in this tricky manner is the stuff of the sewer. He should want no association with it, and only manifest most contemptuousness with those who orchestrated it. Instead, he plays along as though duped, could be part of the ongoing duping.

Coalition, duping, Editorial, ExxonMobil, Government, Pressuring

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Pressuring and duping

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