The PSA is a choke-and-rob agreement

Feb 14, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The International Oil Conference and Exposition which is being hosted in Georgetown this week provides the opportunity for Guyanese to demand that the country gets a better deal from the oil companies. This week’s oil conference is an opportunity to signal the public’s dissatisfaction with the oil deal which was handed to Guyana and which our leaders are stubbornly refusing to renegotiate.
This week, Guyana is going to be swarmed by persons interested in getting a piece of the country’s oil pie. Those who are coming here seeking to do business, as well as the oil bosses, need to be sent a strong signal that the people of Guyana are grossly dissatisfied with the 2% royalties, the 12.5% profit sharing and the meagre US$18M signing bonus.
Guyanese need to demand a better deal. And what better stage to make this demand than when the oil bosses and other investors are here for the International Oil Conference and Exposition.
One of the problems which faces Guyana, is that the country ethnic and political divisions tend to militate against people taking a national stand. The PPP/C supporters tend to view protest as an indictment against the government. The same thing happens when the PNC/R is in power; its supporters shy away from supporting protests because they see this as being against their party.
Yet, we have had situations in which persons from both parties have protested issues which they viewed as directly affecting them. The most obvious which comes to mind was the decision to introduce parking metres in Georgetown. This was met with widespread consternation and the peaceful and orderly protests which ensued led to the decision to abandon this project.
The oil deal cuts across political loyalties. The PPP/C accepts that the deal signed was a bad agreement, and one leader of the APNU+AFC has called for renegotiation. As was reported in this newspaper, during the debate on the National Budget 2022, one government representative described the Production Sharing Agreement as the worst crime committed against the country. A representative of the APNU+AFC said that the Opposition had offered the government its support for the renegotiation of the contract. Bipartisan dissatisfaction therefore exists against the contract.
Lawful and peaceful protests against the oil contract and for renegotiation therefore should not be viewed as either anti-government or anti-Opposition. The PPP/C agrees that the deal is rotten and the Opposition supports renegotiation. Supporters of both parties therefore should lend their voice to the calls for renegotiation of the oil contract.
The oil agreement is not a PPP/C or PNC/R issue. It is a national issue. It affects all Guyana. All Guyana should express, peacefully and lawfully, their rejection of this choke-and-rob agreement.
So far, one man has been in the forefront of opposition to the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) and of the calls for its renegotiation. Now that both sides of the country’s political divide have publicly expressed their concerns over the agreement, there should be less inhibition for calls for an immediate renegotiation of the agreement.
Renegotiation is necessary to ensure that our children and their children have a better future. Unless there are better terms, Guyana will remain mired in poverty and our oil wealth will be taken away from us, leaving us to fight over crumbs.
Do not expect those who are in the Conference this week to care much about the deal which the country gets. They are more interested in the deal which they will get. It is therefore for the people to let the oil czars and the bandwagon of investors in attendance know that the people, to whom the country’s oil wealth belongs, are opposed to this rotten oil deal and demand a fairer share of the royalties and profit sharing and a bigger signing bonus.
Peaceful and lawful protests will send a strong signal to those coming here to do business that, under the present terms of the PSA, they are doing so amidst widespread public dissatisfaction against the terms of the agreement.  Those investors therefore should carefully consider public sentiments before doing so.
Protests do not have to be illegal or disruptive to be effective. People can protest by simply staying at home and by having a Day of Rest. It is not the end which matter but the message which the protest sends, and the most important message which has to be sent is that Guyanese are not in agreement with this deal.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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