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The gas to shore project is a disaster waiting to happen

Sep 02, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

The legendary World Chess Champion Alexander Alekline was once asked, ‘how do you manage to beat your opponents so quickly?’ He replied, ‘because I make them use their own brains.’ If EXXON was asked how it manages to obtain highly favourable deals from a vast array of Global South (Third World) countries, its answer will be a simple duplicate.
Last week, a high-level team headed by Vice President Bharat Jagdeo scurried off to Texas to attend a highly relevant oil and gas meeting, obviously planned months ahead. Suriname which is way ahead of Guyana in its oil and gas personnel and benefits also attended the meeting in Texas. As reported in the media, Suriname was well prepared with its top-class Foreign Minister, a career diplomat who worked with the CARICOM Secretariat and the OAS.

From all appearance, it seems that Suriname had secured a much better contract from the oil conglomerates than Guyana. Suriname gets 36 percent taxes from oil; Guyana gets zero. Suriname gets 6.25 percent royalty; Guyana gets 2 percent. Suriname also has a 20 percent share in its oil blocks while our oil blocks in Guyana were given away free to relatives and friends.

Then there is the huge fallacy consistently fed to Guyanese that natural gas will reduce carbon emissions. As pointed out by many oil and gas experts, and my former Chemistry teacher at St. Stanislaus College Mr. Alfred Bhulai (KN Aug 25, 2021), natural gas from oil wells is also a fossil fuel that emits Carbon Dioxide (a green-house gas). And when burnt, it will emit an equal amount of gas as the other fossil fuels because an equal amount of Carbon Hydrogen (CH) bonds will have to be broken in hydrocarbon fuel for the Carbon and Hydrogen to react with oxygen. In other words, no matter whether the hydrocarbon is liquid (oil) solid (coal) or gas (propane), the same energy will be produced when combustion with oxygen occurs. Ask any high school chemistry student.

So, the government must not mislead the people about the benefits from the gas to shore project, but it should strive to tell them the truth about the impending fallout from the project which is estimated to cost roughly US$1B. The current regime should not risk putting the lives of future generations in jeopardy simply for monetary benefits. Life is too precious.

Yours truly,
Leyland Chitlall Roopnaraine

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