Stability Clause mocks Guyana’s sovereignty

Aug 18, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The ever-clever leaders of America’s oil major, ExxonMobil, have placed the tightest handcuffs around the wrists of Guyanese, and shackles around both their feet to control and dictate them for ages to come. This ugliest of machinery, a gas chamber for Guyanese if we are not alert, is called the Stability of Agreement or, more commonly, the Stability Clause in the oil contract between this country and the oil superpower.

We lay out its language immediately below.

Article 32 of the contract, which lists conditions for ‘Stability of the Agreement’ states at 32.1 that “Except as may be expressly provided herein, the Government shall not amend, modify, rescind, terminate, declare invalid or unenforceable, require renegotiation of, compel replacement or substitution, or otherwise seek to avoid, alter, or limit this Agreement without the prior written consent of Contractor.”

We have a Stability Clause like this, are forced to live with the humiliation of something as gutting and castrating as this, and there are some among us, who proudly call ExxonMobil, a trusted, a true, oil partner. In the intricate web of its essences, what this ugly, perversity of a Stability Clause does is to put a stranglehold on government after government of this trapped country. This Stability Clause just converted every parliament of this country into a shell, the emptiest of loud barrels, where our own oil wealth is concerned.

We can vote, we can have constitutional reform, we can mend our political fences, and we will still remain totally subject to the ploys, plots, and power of ExxonMobil, as is enshrined in this Stability Clause. This is what should make all Guyanese fighting mad, lose any civility and hospitality, when they consider the reach and devastations that ExxonMobil’s self-enriching, and Guyanese-impoverishing. Stability Clause wreaks upon this nation.

Even when viewed from the kindest and politest perspectives, this accursed Stability Clause condemns Guyana to being less than a sovereign nation. If other Guyanese are hesitant to say it, we at this publication assert and insist that this offensive Stability Clause that ExxonMobil made sure is an inviolable part of its tricky oil contract actually transforms Guyana from a sovereign nation to a slave state. This is the modern-day equivalent of that heinous article in the hallowed Constitution of the United States of America that sanctioned the counting of human beings as property, chattel slavery is what it is called.

We call things for what they are, and how they are, if only to enlighten our fellow Guyanese. This country is seen by the leaders of ExxonMobil in Houston, Texas, as their vast plantation on which they are free to roam. Our oil wealth, the fabulous riches, they are free to pluck, be they our men, women, weak leaders, or woefully greedy professionals joining hands with them to sellout their fellow citizens. And in perfect alignment with the old slave plantation mentality, the leaders of ExxonMobil are cunning enough and still more criminally wrathful enough, to take aim at the few Guyanese who rise up and rail against their continuing and intensifying predatory assaults. It is to silence them, or otherwise marginalise them and neutralise them. This is exactly what the original slave masters did in the American Old South, including Texas (the home of ExxonMobil) when they recruited slaves to betray or compromise those daring at rising and standing in rebellion against them.

When we study the implications of this oil contract, and the far-reaching power of that hideous Stability Clause, for all intents and every objective, that Stability Clause renders Guyana and Guyanese the property of ExxonMobil, this great white oil shark. It is voracious, vicious, and venomous, and if we are not careful, not possessing of the required strength and determination, we run the highest risk of being ripped apart, chewed up, and swallowed. This rapacious American oil company that would be the death of us, as it sucks our blood. ExxonMobil is such a callous partner, a haemorrhage to this nation that it is ready to draw every drop of blood that it can squeeze out of Guyanese. This is all evidenced in that Stability Clause. When will Guyanese be outraged and rise up?