Guyana’s oil contract: unusual, unconscionable

Dec 01, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – To describe Guyana’s 2016 oil contract with ExxonMobil as banditry is doing the American oil supergiant a favor, treating it with kid gloves.

To put in the public domain that ExxonMobil’s contract that cheats many Guyanese generations is the work of barbarians is an understatement of rank proportions. To state before the world that ExxonMobil is a Mafia-type corporate entity operating under legal cover, and pretending at being Guyana’s brother and friend is the kiss of a Judas infinitely worse than the original of sacred texts. This is just skimming the surface in presenting a high-level view of what ExxonMobil 21sst century robber barons seized for themselves, stripped from Guyana, and how they sank into new slavery every Guyanese, including the local touts the company has pimping for it.

A man who worked for Chevron, another American oil behemoth, for 30 years should know, for he has had the exposure. Tom Mitro, a Senior Fellow at top tier Columbia University, in a recent Bloomberg presentation, revealed in clinical and analytical terms the savagery of the people at ExxonMobil relative to what the company got versus what it gave to Guyana through the 2016 contract (“After gifting ExxonMobil “unusually sweet oil deal” Guyana now banking on ‘ravelings’ for sustenance -Bloomberg report reveals”, KN November 30). It is a reprehensible document, this contract that meets every element of what a capital crime is, what should be the scaffold for all who had a hand in it, whether Guyanese or American.

Locally, ‘ravelings’ are the equivalent of sawdust or shavings, the leftovers discarded to dogs. ExxonMobil was contractually gifted an area to explore that is bigger than many countries. In oil space to operate, 26,000 plus kilometers is 9 times bigger than the average ExxonMobil international oil lease, and more than 100 times in size of the average lease in the Gulf of Mexico. On that basis alone, this is not a contract for an exploration field, but a killing field with Guyanese as the victims. But ExxonMobil and the current leaders in the PPPC Government don’t see anything unusual about that land grab by the company, and the land giveaway by Guyana. Guyana did not give ExxonMobil an exploration area, Guyana gave ExxonMobil a whole vast, sprawling economic zone, an unprecedented, unimaginable one.

As Tom Mitro said, he has never seen the likes of this land lavishness. Nor does he know of the past, now abhorrent and unacceptable, practice of an oil producing country paying the taxes for the oil operator-company. It goes without saying that Alistair Routledge and Darren Woods see nothing wrong with this setup, have no problems with this tax regime continuing forever untouched. What is alarming is that Guyana’s leaders, men of believed stature, go along with what suits and pleases ExxonMobil’s men, and serves their visions and calculations on their incredible Guyana oil haul.

By any standard, ExxonMobil’s deal with Guyana qualifies as an immense haul. Haul is appropriate because it is the language of swindlers, rogues, and serial felons. ExxonMobil should be run out of this country without a pause, a second thought, on the back of these two considerations (kilometers and taxes) alone. When the other side of the contract equation, the percentage coming to Guyana is counted, ExxonMobil should not be allowed to remain here for one more day, another hour. ExxonMobil is not a partner; it is a company of predators and robbers.

Those are not oil boats and supply ships operating offshore. Those are the slave ships of ExxonMobil, and Guyanese men and women and their children are the trapped and shackled cargo. Which Leader possessing a speck of self-respect, the tiniest streak of patriotism, could stand idly by, make speeches, and let this rape and pillage to go on? What Leader, PPPC Government, or APNU+AFC Opposition, could be so lacking in a gram of warrior’s blood and spirit that they swallow this desecration of Guyana’s oil altar, this disgracing of Guyana’s national dignity?

ExxonMobil can take its 2% royalty, book two planes, and leave. Get these criminals out of Guyana. Give them their ‘best deal ever’ to clean themselves, and then use to wipe the shame and sickness from their faces.