Foreigners are having fun at Guyanese expense

Jan 06, 2022 Editorial, News

The foreigners are having a good long laugh at the expense of Guyanese, as they set up shop here, and drag their tentacles across the faces of Guyanese.

Kaieteur News – Two companies with old American roots established local subsidiaries here Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL)—ExxonMobil Guyana—Hess Guyana Corporation started the ball rolling. Then, the action got so sweet that the savvy Chinese decided that there was plenty of space for them here, too, with China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) now well-settled and all of them drawing down like pigs in filth. (KN January 5 “Exploitative Exxon contract tortuously unfair…is already making vast majority of Guyanese poorer, not richer…but the politicians always do well in countries that produce oil -Int’l Lawyer”).
We at this publication absolutely agree with Ms. Melinda Janki, the attorney relaying the sad story of Guyana. We let her say it in her own words: “…under this deal, when you take everything into account, Guyana gets roughly 10 percent and Exxon and its two partners (Hess and CNOOC) get 90 percent, if that is not exploitative, then I don’t know what is, and I think it is really important that people should understand that the oil sector is exploiting them.” Now we want to go through what Ms. Janki said piece by piece.
This is our oil wealth and we are getting 10 percent, and these predatory monsters are telling us what a good deal we are getting. Indeed, it is a good deal for them, those on the 90 percent side of this story of modern highway robbery. We are reminded of those classic long ago cartoons from Warner Bros, in which Bugs Bunny would start out with ‘one for you and two for me’ only for Porky Pig or whoever the cartoon character is in that episode to scratch their heads and say something is not right here, something smells awfully fishy.’ By that time it is too late, because the loot is gone, and the loser is left empty-handed.
ExxonMobil, Hess Guyana and CNOOC are thinking of us along similar lines. That is, Guyanese are Loony Tunes, and people over whom they could pull the wool over our eyes. They are all having a grand time on the way to the bank, while we are wondering what hit us, how we are going to recover. Somehow, we must find ways to get even and get back at these foreign slave traders, and their local collaborators. We think the time is coming when Guyanese are going to have to stop talking and to start acting. If not, we will still be writing and talking 10 to 20 years from now, with nothing to show for our patience, and even with the likelihood that the oil could be severely depleted. In fact, circumstances may very well force Guyanese, the envy of the region, to go from those having the riches of massive oil wealth, to those forced to sell themselves to get by. This is one of the monsters that hangs over the heads of the peoples of this poor nation.
For this was something else that Ms. Janki laid square on the table. The vast majority of Guyanese are poorer, not richer. We agree again, and with another nightmare scenario that she put before us, namely, ‘the politicians always do well in countries that produce oil.’ They get fat and stinking rich, with reported billions in secret foreign bank accounts, their children buy up expensive real estate in exclusive neighbourhoods in London, New York, and San Francisco, to name a few prime locations. The politicians and their families shop on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and Michigan’s Magnificent Mile. Now that is living high on the hog, and we have some of them here already.
Truth be told, in most places where oil has been found, there is one kind of people who get filthy rich, and the bulk of the population who end up being poorer and working to scratch out an impoverished existence, like scrawny chickens forced to eat dirt. In the 90:10 percent world outlined by Ms. Janki, which favours foreigner freebooters and enriches local conspirators, if that is not exploitative, then nothing is.