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Do not underestimate us Guyanese, Mr. Henson
DEAR EDITOR,
I refer to Charles Sugrim’s letter, captioned “Does ExxonMobil’s Country Manager think that all Guyanese are fools?” having got our government to agree to that ridiculous DEAL!! Of course they did! What is worrying, however, is that the Exxon manager has not been paying attention to the furor this agreement has caused not only in Guyana, as Mr. Sugrim rightly pointed out, but from almost every international voice which has been added to the debate so far.
The fallout from Mr. Henson’s letter will only serve to infuriate the Guyanese public further. It reminds me of the other oil gentlemen who was the CEO of BP when they had that massive oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, and I can only say that Mr. Henson should familiarize himself as to what happened to that gentlemen who was a CEO of BP Anthony Hayward. The story goes like this
Though BP was officially denying the rumours, Hayward’s departure as CEO had been sealed in cement almost from the day the spill began on April 20, 2010, Hayward was a gaffe machine. Here are just a few of his greatest hits:
-On April 29, according to the New York Times, early on in the spill Hayward told his fellow BP executives in frustration: “What the hell did we do to deserve this?” (Well, according to the early results of investigations into the Deepwater Horizon accident, it turned out that they did quite a lot to cause it)
On May 13, Hayward told the Guardian that the oil spill was “relatively tiny”. “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” In fact by that time, with the broken well gushing up to 60,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf per day, as much as 1.4 million barrels of crude might have already been lost, making it already worse than the Exxon Valdez spill.
On May 18, Hayward told Sky News that the environmental impact of the spill “will be very, very modest.” It was a lie.
On May 30, as he was touring the Louisiana coast and apologizing for the spill, Hayward told reporters “I would like my life back,” referring to the way the spill had taken over his time.
Also on May 30, responding to reports that spill cleanup workers were falling ill, Hayward played doctor. “Food poisoning is clearly a big issue,” he said. In fact there are serious concerns about the toxic effects of the oil spill.
On May 31, faced with a number of scientific studies showing evidence that large clouds of oil were forming deep underwater—where they could damage Gulf sealife—Hayward simply went for denial. “The oil is on the surface,” he said. “There aren’t any plumes.” This was also not true. And of course, no one will forget Hayward’s bravura performance before Congressional investigators on June 17, when he revealed that he apparently knew very little about, well, anything at all, that had to do with the Deepwater Horizon accident.
So do not underestimate us Guyanese, Mr. Henson, you have certainly not heard the last of this agreement which you are so glibly telling us is good, when in fact most of us supported by a massive amount of foreign experts, question it fundamentally. We, Mr. Henson, the Guyanese people, have in our numbers rejected it, and funnily enough it is the first thing which we as a nation have agreed upon in several decades, and I personally thank you for that, but as for the agreement sir, our people are saying no, and if can be legally quashed, they will not allow it to stand.
Tony Vieira
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