Two years of herculean effort

Jan 30, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana must learn from Trinidad and its recent renegotiation experience, as articulated by that country’s Prime Minister, Keith Rowley. Oil companies will not yield an inch; they not give up a penny without a dogfight. Trinidad too two years to renegotiate, a contract is a contract is a contract.

In Guyana, our President labeled ExxonMobil a ‘superpower’. It is the truth, but also indicates too much awe and fear. It is a better not to give any advantage to committed adversaries; to show any weakness, or too much regard. ExxonMobil is stronger, but Guyana could be stronger when it is resolved to get better for its oil. Guyana must be tougher because it has the foundations: all those billions of barrels below the seabed. Fight and fight, and when ExxonMobil believe that we are ready to give up the fight, then shock the American killer whale by finding the energy, nerve, and passion that reflect the fight has only just begun.

We have the oil treasure, and we will exploit it at our pleasure. Instead of racing ahead in a web of weakness, Guyana must be wise, slowdown for its purposes. There must be the astuteness to pace oil developments, to manage ExxonMobil’s project approvals to benefit this country’s interests. For sure, we want royalties and oil profits, as meager as both are, but we also know that ExxonMobil’s executives, workers, and shareholders want Guyana’s cheap, high quality oil much more. That urgent need of ExxonMobil for profits, for ruling the global oil roost, has its price. It is one that must be paid to Guyana.

The approval process must be utilized to our advantage. There is nothing in the 2016 oil contract that prevents us from slowing approval of new oil projects, operating with all deliberate speed. Those are our trumps, among others. But it calls for courageous leadership to go after ExxonMobil, and make it offers that the company simply cannot refuse. It is not blackmail, only taking the cunning contract that ExxonMobil concocted and convert it into an arsenal of weapons that work for us.

This is what leaders and citizens should be about, not fawning and drooling over ExxonMobil, which has maimed and crippled this country. Take a careful look at PPPC Government ‘superstars’, and detect how they shrink from confronting ExxonMobil and squeeze out more for Guyana. It is well known that we lack the human and systems capabilities to be the best stewards of this bounty of nature. It follows, therefore, that we have to take our time and study new and unfamiliar materials to reassure ourselves as to what is the best decision to make, given our circumstances.

Time is our best ally, our weapon that should be feared. It is vital that the PPPC Government make skillful use of time in every approval process, every area of ExxonMobil’s operations offshore, so that the oil company sees the light, the nature of the terrain, and its choices. The bottom-line is that Guyana must allow itself to be bullied, cave in, before ExxonMobil’s demands.

This is where President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo get to show their substances, how much they are for Guyanese interests. If ExxonMobil wants to play rough, so must our two leaders. When ExxonMobil is ready to talk turkey, then so should we be, but only when the long-awaited time comes. We can outwait ExxonMobil, for the oil is not perishable, not going anywhere. Further, the demand for oil, with all of its ups and down, will be there for the foreseeable future, technological developments and all.

We have been backed into a corner by a rapacious, criminally callous American corporate power backed by the might of the American superpower (observe the Ambassador). But we are not without our assets, without our strengths. The President and Vice President and Opposition Leader all know that if they stop dividing Guyana, start mending fences, then a united Guyana has all that is required to stand-up and say: this is ours, and it could be had under these terms. There is no stronger, better, more feared renegotiating weapon than that, and our politicians and ExxonMobil know it. So also do the ABC&EU countries.

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Two years of herculean effort

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Two years of herculean effort

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