Why don’t we have well surveillance?

Feb 26, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We need well surveillance over those production platforms, and we need it round-the-clock. Surveillance that is sophisticated, and which offers the degree of confidence that whatever Exxon is doing out there, we are right on top of them. We do not know what is happening out there, nowhere as much as we should know. Moreover, Exxon should not be trusted, because of the revealing record of what it has done elsewhere. What Exxon did was devious and dangerous. It is also criminal and which we will pinpoint later.
It is why, therefore, uninterrupted surveillance should not be delayed much longer, not be resisted by any Guyanese, including political leaders, their supporters, and the bureaucrats they have placed in positions of substantial oversight. Surveillance cameras keep us informed, help us to reconcile what Exxon says and report it has done with our owned and controlled electronic surveillance tools and equipment. To conduct our oil business, manage our risks, and husband our oil wealth sensibly, we must have surveillance cameras, and at the earliest opportunity.
A look-back into how Exxon has dealt with others should alert as well as alarm us, of how this American oil juggernaut uses its vast resources to mislead and endanger, and to trick and cheat. Because it is so wily, it doesn’t get caught often, but as the following examples confirm it does fall afoul of the law.
In 1990, there was a heating oil spill from Exxon’s Bayway facility, into the Arthur Kill channel, that separates Staten Island, New York from New Jersey. According to reports, the first reaction of Exxon was to minimise the quantity of the leak, then “stonewall” investigating authorities (“Exxon ‘stonewalling’ on spill, New Jersey aide says” – New York Times, January 6, 1990). New Jersey’s Governor Thomas H. Kean was reportedly “angry and upset” about how Exxon’s people were responding to the spill, and ordered a probe for possible criminal violations, raising the ante on the company. Initially, Exxon first claimed that only 5,000 gallons of heating oil had leaked, then came closer to the truth with the belated admission that it was not 5,000 gallons, but some 500,000 gallons. It ended up being 569,000 gallons of heating oil that was spilled, but which the company officials first attempted to seriously minimise, only to be forced by gathering storms to level.
The point for Guyana’s leaders, environmental observers, and Guyanese citizens is that Exxon’s people are long practiced in the arts of concealment of dangers, truths, and circumstances that give negative portrayals of company and leaders. Part of the mythology and mystique that the company crafted for itself is that “accidents are impossible, because no man makes mistakes, only a malfunctioning system.” Exxon is a company that must be watched on every move that it makes both on land and offshore, especially the latter.
But there is still another side to Exxon, which underscores the need for unending vigilance regarding everything the company does, since it cannot be trusted, as the record attests. In the instance of an oil trader by the name of Chuck Hamel, Exxon’s people were not too low in tricking him first with deviousness, then in cheating him through what could only be rightly termed as nothing less than criminal. When Hamel disclosed that Exxon and others were deliberately adding water to the crude from the Alyeska pipeline, they decided to attack him by invading his home, secretly obtaining his phone records, and recording his phone conversations, which were all exposed. Worse still, Hamel had a lease on a plot in the rich Alaskan North Slope, which Exxon’s people assured him had no oil reserves. He sold his holdings to Exxon cheaply, only for the company to start producing 158,000 barrels per day from the same land. Exxon was forced to settle with him later.
These examples emphasize the corporate deceiver Exxon is and how it cheats others. Guyanese, it should be clear why we must watch Exxon’s operations with round-the-clock surveillance, for it will lie to us, trick us, and rob us some more.

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