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Exxon slights Kaieteur News

Apr 25, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Foreign companies who operate in Guyana must obey the Laws of Guyana. Or go home! It is as simple as that. No sovereign country should allow foreign companies to impugn the laws of Guyana.
The Constitution is the highest law of the land. The Constitution provides for press freedom. Any act, which attempts to punish or discriminate against a media house constitutes a violation of press freedom. Such actions are prohibited by the Constitution of Guyana.
Governments have always been impressing upon foreign companies, the need for them to obey the Labour Laws of Guyana. But these companies are also obligated to respect the Constitution of Guyana.
ExxonMobil will find it difficult to convince the Guyanese public that its non- invitation to tour a drill ship was not directly related to the criticisms which the Kaieteur News have been carrying about the contract, which was signed between the company and the Government of Guyana.
The government and the opposition are not likely to question the actions of ExxonMobil. Kaieteur News cannot be said to be liked by either.
The question to be asked therefore is whether a foreign company should be selective in its dealing with the media. Obviously, it would have been impossible for ExxonMobil to have all media houses tour the drill ship, but it is obvious that the omission of Kaieteur News was no oversight or mistake.
The non-invite of Kaieteur News was to be expected but it is not lawful. It was Kaieteur News, which exposed the horrible deal, which the government entered into with ExxonMobil. It is Kaieteur News, which continues to point out the egregious elements of that arrangement.
ExxonMobil could not have been pleased about that. The government is not pleased about the exposure of the deal. The government is not hiding its displeasure with Kaieteur News. And ExxonMobil’s recent actions would suggest that it too is not prepared to hide its displeasure with this newspaper.
Regardless of how ExxonMobil feels about the fact that Kaieteur News has exposed how they have been able to have the upper hand in the oil negotiations, this cannot be a justifiable or reasonable basis for discriminating against the country’s highest selling newspaper.
The actions by ExxonMobil mean that the readership of Kaieteur News cannot benefit from reports of that event. It means also that the public is spared the observations, which the newspaper was likely to make.
This latest outrage against press freedom comes as ExxonMobil is likely to post impressive first quarter earnings based on oil prices reaching their highest levels since 2017. This spells good news for ExxonMobil and for Guyana because the higher oil prices rise, then the greater the chances of first oil being produced in 2021.
Already the share price of ExxonMobil has been marginally boosted. The higher the price goes, then the higher would be the worth of Guyana’s 3.2 billion barrels of reserves, which are increasing the asset value of the company.
The local journalists were flown out to one of the drill ships contracted by Exxon. The reporters found 23 Guyanese working there, not the hundreds of persons, which many Guyanese had to come to expect. The journalists have not yet reported on whether they enquired as to why none of the Guyanese were actually involved in the drilling exercise. So, there is no capacity-building taking place here.
It is an insult that of the 23 Guyanese involved, fourteen were in catering which really means cooking and washing. Had Kaieteur News been around, it would have asked why it was that Guyanese have been handed the lowly jobs.
Kaieteur News would have also asked about were the wages of those who were fortunate to work onboard the drill ship. We may never know!

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