Pumping at breakneck speed

Jan 27, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Foreigners are cheering Guyana’s high acceleration programme to explore, produce, and capitalise on its oil bonanza. While other countries take 15 years to reach the production stage with their oil, Guyana only takes 4 years. Guyana must have the wisest decision makers in the world, or it could be that those making the decisions on oil are so clueless that they do not even know the perils with which they play. Speed has its time and place, when there are supporting circumstances; but speed at the alarming rate which Guyanese leaders have embraced is cause for dire concern. Breakneck speed means just that because it usually leads to such a horrible situation.

Rushing forward uncaringly at breakneck speeds is a race to disaster, an invitation to potential tragedy of some kind, including the financial, or environmental. The odds are increased, and they are not in Guyana’s favor. When consideration is given to the fact that the biggest priority of oil companies is profits, then this only adds another worrying dimension to an already distressing set of circumstances. Because when oil companies think and dream of profits, it always along these lines: the maximum profits that could be had in the shortest time that is possible, and at the least cost. American oil supergiant ExxonMobil is a champion in this field. To make matters even smoother and richer for ExxonMobil, it has found the most cooperative and helpful partner that could be had anywhere in the world, in the form of the PPPC Government, and its supporting cast of sellers and betrayers of the interests and prospects of the Guyanese people.

To lop off almost 75% of the time normally required by countries to arrive at the production stage in their oil sector is an amazing achievement by any petrostate. What makes matters even more unbelievable, there are the underlying circumstances, which all Guyanese, and the rest of the world, know that Guyana labors with to its tremendous disadvantage. Guyana does not have the human resource capacity to oversee and handle its oil wealth to the best of its ability. Guyana does not possess the technology and equipment to follow and learn the progression (ins and outs, and nuts and bolts) of its massive oil asset. Guyana does not prioritize the development of updated oil laws that would empower it to stand over its oil endowment and speak with power and authority that this is the way it is going to be. And Guyana does not position itself, and protect itself, with the range of robust regulations that would enable it to get the most, the very best, out of its underwater fossil fuels treasure house. In the saddest of summaries, Guyana is nowhere near the level of oil wisdom, oil capacity, and oil sophistication that are all compulsory, if this country is to exploit successfully what it owns.

But the PPPC Government has made runaway speeds its standard of management, it mantra of operations. Breakneck speed it is, and breakneck speed is what it will be, come what may, and regardless of who says what in the local environment. This is not only dangerous, it is height of foolishness. For breakneck speed when we know so little, or are such babe in the treacherous oil woods, can only be to ExxonMobil’s interests. The faster Guyana allows it and partners to hustle ahead, the more hustles (tricks) will come to be the order of the day in our offshore oilfields.

Experts gather in Trinidad and use Guyana as an example for others to follow. What does Guyana know that others don’t, especially when it knows so little? What is happening at the crux, is that leaders in the PPPC Government are being used and they are only too willing to play along. They are being spurred on to maintain the reckless breakneck speeds, with so many aspects of the oil world (exploration,

production, marketing and sales, and the trading of oil) still largely unknown to us, and likely to our detriment. This is more than governmental foolishness and recklessness. We call this racing forward at breakneck speeds for what they are. It is nothing but governmental and leadership madness, and in spades.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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Breakneck speed, ExxonMobil, Guyana, oil bonanza, Peeping Tom

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