H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Renegotiation Of Oil Contract – A Simple Solution

Jul 26, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – The clamor of calls, and the intensity of pitch, both have the projection and quality of surround sound.  I hear and I read of a single word: renegotiate. Then in two words: renegotiate contract.  Last in three or four or five words: renegotiate Exxon-Guyana contract.  Or, renegotiate the vile Exxon contract.  All have fallen on deaf ears, no matter how strident, or how furious, the push has been for renegotiation of this monstrous, barbaric, and enslaving (my words) Exxon oil contract.

The Exxon Guyana Country Head, Viceroy Alistair Routledge hates any word that sounds like renegotiation, presses for it.  This American Maharajah, definitely an oil brahmin, detests and dismisses any calls for renegotiation of the Exxon contract.  Guyana is getting enough money already, as it is.  Thanks for enlightening the heathens, setting them straight Mr. Moneyman Routledge, with that beauty of the largest revenue stream of any contract.  This is how well Maharajah Routledge has done his homework, how expertly he compares the Exxon pittance to gold and other mineral contract cashflows. So, let’s not talk about renegotiation, shall we?  Frankly, it’s a little tiring, boring also.

The headman in Guyana, Oil Commissar, Dr. Bharrat E. Jagdeo has also walked back his prior commitment(s) to renegotiate this diseased oil contract.  Investors will be spooked.  Guyanese are starving in this high-income country, but Oil Commissar Dr. Jagdeo is more pained by the fear of investors running away, or steering clear away, from Guyana, should renegotiation of Exxon’s contract be put on the table.  I am weighing whether Dr. Jagdeo is more American than Guyanese today, considering his unmoving allegiance to Exxon, his surrender to America.  I have some rough news for brother Barry: he can bleach his head blond, and have a skin peel performed, but he is still looks too much like me to his foreign friends.  He can have them, exploiters from the first day on earth, from the first page of history.

As for President Ali, a leader of a particular strain of excellence, and Opposition Leader Norton, wherever Dr. Jagdeo stands on renegotiation, they are part of that #metoomovement.  For Guyanese, the finality of our national political leaders condenses to a simple reality: no movement on calls or cries for renegotiation of the Exxon oil contract.  No!  Not now!  Not just now!  Not anytime soon!  Not anytime at all, possibly!  Who are their shareholders, Exxon’s millions of them, or the few Guyanese people?  Where is God, country, family, and oil patrimony in this for Guyana’s top leaders?  Clearly, Exxon’s piracy, and the Exxon family, are most important to our political champions.  With champions like those, I’ll take a slave ship’s captain, or a plantation overseer, thank you.  We have them here presently, but today’s overseers are not for sugar, but oil.  It seems that Guyanese are stuck.

I have a little solution to this renegotiation of the Exxon contract.  From my perspective, it is an easy one.  Not easy logistically, but what is most helpful to get us past this burning, boiling, dividing issue of renegotiation or no renegotiation.  Here is my recommendation, in which I believe, most firmly, lies the solution to this question.  It is what I see as the way that lifts us out of the quicksand, that puts an end to the quarrelsome sparring and savaging of Guyanese by Guyanese, and that which helps us to move beyond the infighting and bloodletting.

THE ISSUE OF RENEGOTIATION OF THE 2016 EXXO-GUYANA OIL CONTRACT MUST BE PUT TO A NATIONAL REFERENDUM.  All eligible Guyanese, 16 years and over, with proper credentials, competent or incompetent, get to have their say, cast their vote, for or against renegotiation.  Guyanese are given the opportunity to prove which comes first: raw partisanship, cult leadership, or convincing patriotism.  As an added benefit, Guyanese are able to demonstrate beyond any doubt, whether they are more for petroleum company’s interests, or patriotic and patrimonial interests.  It is well past the time that citizens of this rich country stop the arguing and sword-fencing, come to grips with the pointless gutting and castrating of one another.  It is time that this nation puts this renegotiation baby to bed, and sings a lullaby to it, to help it to drift into deep, undisturbed sleep.

If the verdict of the Guyanese people in any such referendum about renegotiation is do it, then let it be done, as though the will of God.  Even if hell on earth has to be encountered, must be endured.  Just let renegotiation of the Exxon oil contract be.  Or it is begone ExxonMobil and Mr. Alistair Routledge et al.  Nothing personal, I assure one and all, just the business (and dignity) of the Guyanese people.  On the other hand, if the vote of the Guyanese people is not to renegotiate, to leave untouched the Exxon contract, then the people would have spoken loud and clear, and that is what it must be.  We must bow before the will of the people, and move on with the Exxon contract, as is.  What could be clearer, cleaner, easier than a referendum to close this issue, this question, out?

(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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• Contract, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, oil, renegotiation, solution

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