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ExxonMobil’s 2023 profit haul

Feb 07, 2024 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil made out like one of those notorious high seas buccaneering gangs of several centuries ago.  By any measurement, profits of US$36B is the equivalent of Sir Francis Drake seizing those Spanish galleons laden with loot from the mines of the poor natives of the New World.  It is no surprise, therefore, that Darren Woods is chortling about “high-grading our portfolio” and “top-tier” profit performance.  Hail to the Chief, and it is not the President of the United States, but Chief Woods of ExxonMobil.  He has done well for his shareholders, stakeholders, workers, and himself.  Guyana’s oil had a conspicuous role in that US$36B profit achievement.

Whether the news source was Reuters or another, the name Guyana was there, and as a contributor of heft to ExxonMobil’s profits.  The only other oil and gas source that was worthy of mention is in the US, the Permian Basin.  The Permian Basin is an oilfield that has been around for decades, while the Stabroek Block reservoir is a newborn baby that is growing by leaps and bounds.  Discovery has followed in the shadow of other discoveries, and the early descriptions were with superlatives.  Though the people spearheading the company’s Guyana operations have been cagey enough to keep quiet about the estimated quantity of oil present in the new discoveries, they add to the richness that is the Guyana oil prize.  To put another way, the odds are heavily in favor of Guyana’s oil patch becoming a bigger and bigger segment of ExxonMobil’s profits.

No question that the company has made strategic investments as part of its diversifying push, but its biggest golden goose is this oil that comes from Guyana.  It is the same high-quality, low cost of production, oil that comes from below Guyana’s seabed that is the apple of ExxonMobil’s eye. Guyana’s oil is what drives Venezuelan leaders into frenzies, and it is what Darren Woods himself called the “jewel” in ExxonMobil’s crown.  Guyana’s oil is being spoken of in such gushing terms as “worldclass” and ‘defining’ and ‘difference-making’.  At the same time, the people who own this great oil wealth, the citizens of Guyana, are largely untouched by its richness.  ExxonMobil gets richer and richer, Hess Corporation has been able to lift itself up, then market itself into a huge sale and multibillion dollar payday.

The Chinese company in the consortium quietly collects its share and counts its good fortune.  But not the Guyanese owners of the oil, the ones who are the most important shareholders. Every commercial entity that comes close to the oil of Guyana benefits highly, but not Guyanese.  The makers of boats, the providers of goods and services that are essential to Guyana’s offshore oil activities all prosper nicely.  But not the Guyanese people.  Darren Woods is in a position to celebrate his rich take from Guyana’s oil, but Guyanese parliamentarians are finding every excuse that is imaginable to remind citizens that this country is “not rich yet…”.  The world gets rich from this country’s oil, but Guyanese have a government, whose members are proud to say publicly that Guyana is not rich yet, and they are content for it to remain that way.

When does “not rich yet” transform to the state of ‘not poor anymore? What is being done by the PPPC Government that gives Guyanese confidence that, as ExxonMobil’s CEO is beside himself with joy today, their day of joyful sharing in their enriching birthright is also right around the corner, as in almost here?  Guyanese should not be looking to the future, and the slippery promise of more oil revenues in the future.  The future is today, just like that of ExxonMobil and Darren Woods and Alistair Routledge.  Anyone, any politician, any crafty operator, who speaks of nothing much doing today, but there will be plenty in the future for Guyanese to taste and feel their wealth is making a fool of them.  Oil prices can come in for a shock, then what?  ExxonMobil and others would have reaped, and Guyanese would have already been stripped, skinned, and scalped.  The future is loaded, and Guyanese would still have little to nothing to show at the individual level for their oil inheritance.

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