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Guyanese must call on oil companies to dedicate portion of CSR budget towards climate change efforts – CGX Head
Since the discovery of oil equivalent resources in the Stabroek Block five years ago, oil and gas companies have been gripped by a renewed sense of desire to execute aggressive
CGX Head, Professor Suresh Narine
exploration programmes.
They are all eager for a taste of ExxonMobil’s success which has unearthed over eight billion barrels of oil equivalent resources. Even as the yearning to mimic this success grows greater, so too do the calls for Guyana to treat its climate change efforts with a greater sense of urgency. Executive Director of CGX (Guyana), Professor Suresh Narine, is in agreement that Guyana, without question, needs to do all that is necessary to tackle climate change. In the same breath, he noted that oil and gas exploration companies can be called upon to play a role in this process.
During his first appearance on Kaieteur Radio’s Programme, Guyana’s Oil and You, Professor Narine was keen to point out that each oil and gas company has a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget. On this very point, he posited that Guyanese can make advances for a portion of that budget to be used to aid climate change efforts.
Professor Narine said, “…We should be saying to them in a clarion call that ‘This is your percentage of CSR that we would like to see in the de-carbonized economy’ because philosophically, there is no barrier; there is no mental, business, commercial or investment barrier between a company investing in fossilized energy, and a company investing in renewable energy…”
The CGX Head added, “We need to lead them so that these companies are not fragmented; that their efforts be put into policy driven imperatives that we as Guyanese underscore as necessary, because that will remove the doubt…”
Professor Narine was keen to note that oil and gas companies are, at their very core, companies that are predicated on returns for investments for their shareholders. Be that as it may, Professor Narine posited that oil and gas companies understand that if they do not look forward to what the forecast and the future may bring, then the act of doing business only focused on dollars and cents may preclude being in business in the future.
Continuing on this point, Professor Narine said, “I want to say that…There is nothing philosophically or morally repugnant about companies raison d’être (the most important reason or purpose for someone or something’s existence) (being) to address their bottom lines. There is nothing repugnant about them doing just so.”
Professor Narine was keen to note that at the end of the day, “This is our country and we need to drive. If we leave a vacuum for companies to drive who are constituted with only one goal in mind then it is impossible for those companies to lead us into sustainability. If we understand the gravitas of that statement to our population then we can begin a conversation on how those companies can help up to de-carbonize.”
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