OP-ED: Exxon’s new building

Feb 19, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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 By: GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – GY$32 billion (US$160M) for an office complex for American oil superpower, ExxonMobil, must be making the thrifty founder of this fossil fuel leviathan turn in his grave.  Not to worry, John D, we are paying for it.  With a building like that, Exxon projects visions of a gloriously domineering oil imperium in Guyana.  I say why not, since this Guyana Colony, this Guyana Protectorate (Satellite) must be held close to the bosom, if only to ensure that all is in order and all are kept in order.  I wonder if Guyana’s head-of-state is expected to go skipping over to meet with Exxon’s Country Head in his expensive digs. Please don’t let that be, Excellency.

For the record, I have problems with this building being cost recoverable.  However, I understand that there are costs to doing business, and this building qualifies.  But I disagree with one for US$160M; I could cope with half that figure.

Meanwhile, I hear that Exxon future ramped up production levels, to over a million barrels daily, necessitates the company having this kind of building and accompanying systems.  This begs the question about how much it is putting into (or cares about) overall monitoring currently, with hundreds of thousands of daily output offshore.  Safety, accuracy, integrity of processes concerns.

To reiterate, I appreciate that Exxon has to setup a proper shop somewhere in keeping with its pride of place in Guyana, but GY$32B is too rich for me; and I am accustomed to suffocating excesses from American corporate anacondas.  This is how the life of weak, wasted Third World countries are sucked out of them, and spat out with unconcerned indifference.  It is nothing but the best for Exxon, and all the better because Guyanese are paying every nickel and dime for it.

Man, if only we could get leaders with some bone in their body, some testosterone in their systems…  In piteous contrast, we today have a bold local leader who had nothing good to say about the 2016 contract provisions now falling over himself, and tripping his tongue in his haste to support, justify, approve whatever Exxon does, regardless of the cost to Guyana.

More and more Guyanese are watching all this with seething distaste.  I discern stirrings in sunny, oily Guyana.  Just how oily, other Guyanese have not even started to fathom.  Perhaps they will, when they get around to putting behind them for good the shackles of PPP and PNC, plus discarding those cultures that color our visions, poison our fevered existence.

Weighing this building, I think we have replaced paramountcy of the party with paramountcy of the colony.  The Exxon Colony that is being established here right before our eyes. I think that by the time that that oil (and governing) fortress is finished, the US Embassy could abandon its regular haunts in Kingston, and take up residence there.  This is because Exxon’s corporate stronghold is going to have more electronics than Air Force One and the White House put together, so secure a site it is going to be.  I am considering ceasing the use of WhatsApp, encryption guarantee and all. May even halt writing; at least for Lent.

Now it is confirmed most unambiguously that Guyana pays for the building.  The Hon. Vice President did.  I am unclear regarding where the Opposition stands.  Frankly, politicians have no choice, but join the bandwagon of Guyanese cheerleaders.  It seems that all are sewed up, for that great American oilman, Mr. Alistair Routledge, is on record as saying that both local political lodestars (PPP and PNC) know of Exxon’s building plans.  Neither City Council nor Village Council dare object.  What Exxon wants; Exxon gets -GY$32B for a stupendous American corporate shack.  My hang-up: why such a costly structure?

I detect that this GY$32B building will be a Tower of Babel.  The Italians have their leaning Pisa, the French their Eiffel, and the English their own in London.  Exxon Towers are where the Americans are going to behead, burn at the stake, and draw and quarter rowdy Guyanese who object to their plays, get in their way.  Look around, Exxon has already started, with the noise from the craven Guyanese proof.  There is the sycophantic set drooling, poor Guyanese robbed of patrimony crying, and a few conscientious objectors making nuisances of themselves. The PPP Government will know who to bring to heel.

By now, it should be clear that that GY$32B building rubs raw.  I can’t breathe; and all I am trying to do is to go home, have a proud, respected homeland.  Look at this: the budgeted sum of direct cash relief (pensions, caring, tax) is less than half of Exxon’s proposed structural symbol of American imperial hegemony over Guyana.  Perhaps, those same high political titles identified (and the people holding them) may wish to share with citizens how helpless they are, and how Guyana is being transformed into a full-fledged Exxon Colony.  I am beginning to feel like a Mexican, a Filipino.

(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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• Exxon, ExxonMobil, GHK Lall, Guyana, Guyana Protectorate (Satellite)

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