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Wet beaks

Oct 04, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

“Wet my beak” is an idiom for saying let us have a drink together. Guyanese in the old days would ask persons for a “wet break”, which was an appeal for a “raise” to buy a drink.
When you saw someone, you know you could ask them for a “wet beak” to go to a rum shop and take a drink. You wetted your beak on the drinks.
This week, Kaieteur News carried a story of the Mexican government quietly accepting a $25.5 million payout earlier this year from oil giant BP to free the company of responsibility for polluting Mexican waters after the largest oil spill of the 21st century.
Mexico received what we in Guyana call a “wet beak”. The sum received was a “raise”, a small sum which could only buy a small amount of pleasure. The Kaieteur News report noted that the small payout was part of a confidential settlement to dismiss a lawsuit relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, when a BP offshore drilling rig exploded on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico, killing more than 11 workers and spilling more than 4 million barrels of oil not far off the coast of Mexico.
According to the report, the full extent of the environmental damage in Mexico is not known. Mexico later sued but has now decided to settle for slightly more than the US$18M “wet beak”, which Guyana received from ExxonMobil as a signing bonus. It was reported that at the same time, the Mexican government entered into several other agreements with BP.
The oil industry is interlinked. There is a fixed modus operandi. Companies have similar game plans. They make deals, especially clandestine deals. The give out “wet beaks” in order to “wet one’s beak,” an idiom, which means to extort benefits from another person. The companies pay a ‘wet beak” and they get other deals in return. They never lose.

Guyana got a “wet beak” from Exxon. It got a pittance of US$ 18M as a signing bonus, which the government was so ashamed of that it hid this fact for more than a year from the Guyanese public. It was only under intense pressure that the government was forced to admit this fact and to reveal the shameful contract it signed with ExxonMobil.
The signing bonus was the “wet beak” for Exxon to gain exploratory and production rights to what is now believed to be four billion barrels of oil reserves worth more than US$ 200 billion.
These reserves are a diminishing resource, not a renewable resource. And the signing bonus is supposed to compensate Guyana for a wasting resource, one that will not be replenished.

Guyana gave away rights to four billion barrels of oil for a US$ 18 signing bonus. And to add insult to injury, an environmental organization signed an agreement with the same ExxonMobil for US$10M. Conservation International will use that sum to “to train Guyanese for sustainable job opportunities and to expand community-supported conservation” and to support Guyana’s Green State Development Strategy.
Drinkers know that when the “wet beak” is exhausted, it is time to look for another client. And there are many other clients – oil companies – lining up to offer their wet beaks so that Guyanese can continue to enjoy their “wet beaks”.

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