Jagdeo the ballet dancer

Sep 22, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – One thing that could be said about Guyana’s chief policymaker, Bharrat Jagdeo, is that he is a man who slickly adapts to the demands of new developments.  He can be a bellower when grasping at straws to camouflage the weaknesses and the related stresses under which he labors.  Other times, he is like a ballet dancer who tries to deliver under the pressure of the moment, only to rip his tights and expose himself.  At his best, the vice president glides like someone who has polished the bottom of his shoes, thinking that he performs smoothly.  What he has refused to admit is that many times he finds himself on a downward slanting carpet of banana peels, which upends him rather unceremoniously. His management of this vital oil and gas sector has left him shopworn, which shows in the raggedness of his responses, the tightness around his eyes and mouth.  Often he is locked in a hostile grimace that fails to conceal the pathetic nature of his leadership.

Guyana’s offshore oil partner, ExxonMobil, has been upping and upping its daily production rate dizzyingly.  The Liza One and Liza Two projects are scheduled to run dry in as low as seven years, and not the initial 20-year field life estimated for both.  When questioned about this, Jagdeo exhibited his first dance step: “do you think that what’s in a well is the final figure?”  It is now a standard of Guyana’s leading oil authority to answer a question with one of his own.  It is how he gives himself room to think, presents him with the opportunity to circle around the issue, and come up with an answer that could travel from the strange to the disturbing.  The hole that he digs for himself, that he chooses to pretend doesn’t exist, is what gives away his hand.  He knows that we know that an estimate is just what it says that it is, an estimate, which means that it is subject to revision.  An estimate may be close to the original number announced, or with more space.  But to take that estimate and multiply it and extend it as the chief policymaker did is stretching things past the limit.  “We believe that the life of these projects will be around the original timeframe, and some may even extend further out.”  As answers go, that latest one from Jagdeo is as slick and hazy as he can conjure.

Considering the current accelerated rate of ExxonMobil’s daily production, and Jagdeo’s pinning his answer (and projections) right back to the 20-year life cycle of the fields, if not beyond, the Liza One and Liza Two projects could turn out to house much more oil than originally estimated.  Five years of production at increasing daily rates has led to 44% and 35% of the Liza 1 & 2 being extracted respectively, but Jagdeo insists that new discoveries will maintain the life of projects to 20 years and, if things work out well, possibly longer.  This indicates that the Liza 1 & 2 potential could be staggeringly more than ExxonMobil has informed Guyana.  Given where Guyana’s top oilman is, the question could be raised about how ExxonMobil is carrying out its exploration: by the centimeter or the kilometer?  Considering Jagdeo’s fresh position of the 20-year duration still holding, both Liza One and Liza Two could probably hold twice as much as oil as the 452M and 570M barrels respectively that was the original estimate, by the time that this supposed present day exploration by ExxonMobil is completed.  How could a company so expertly informed in oil science and oil math be so far off?  What does ExxonMobil really know about Liza 1 & 2 estimates, and how much of that has been accurately shared with Guyana?  We have seen the games that ExxonMobil has played with the last eight new discoveries and how much oil has been found.

Given Jagdeo’s answer about estimates and sticking to the original 20-year lifespan for Liza 1 & 2, Guyanese are now living with more wool over their eyes.  The more Jagdeo dances like this, unveils his tricks, the more he shows his weakness, unfitness for the oil role he holds.

• adapts, Bharrat Jagdeo, dancer, Editorial, policymaker