Depending on Exxon

Aug 16, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We depend on ExxonMobil for production reports about how many barrels of oil the company pumps daily. We depend on ExxonMobil to conduct feasibility studies for oil projects, and then say that we review those studies. We depend on ExxonMobil for data and detail, for almost everything: inclusive of how many barrels of proven reserves of oil equivalents the company has found, to how much is produced daily, to what is being lined up for later. Observing this ballooning oil and gas sector, something becomes blindingly clear. Guyana has become a full dependent, a ward, of ExxonMobil.

Dependents are helpless, totally subject to the good graces of their guardians. Since oil is the subject, and ExxonMobil the company, then the best that Guyanese can expect is the cruelty and barbarity that hopeless dependents are forced to live with, and pretend happiness. Guyana gets scraps for its great oil birthright, and ExxonMobil says that it is taking good care of its Guyana partner, its charge, in what is a predatory business. Guyana owns the wealth, and ExxonMobil owns Guyana lock, stock, and barrel.

Whatever information we get on vital aspects of this nation’s oil patrimony, we get straight from ExxonMobil’s head and mouth. Whatever this American oil supergiant concocts in its head about proven reserves, daily production numbers, and so forth, this is what Guyana gets. This is the equivalent of the managers and shareholders of a bank depending on their customers to tell them what is going on.

Without a doubt, this country is not even a beginner in the oil business. But seven years after the first discovery of oil, we should have been a little ahead of where we are today. Arrangements ought to have already been in place for round the clock onboard surveillance on the oil rigs. This is so that we can know with confidence that the numbers about daily production that ExxonMobil is giving to this country are not pigs in bags. That is, to be onsite and obtain for ourselves, whether there is underreporting of production, or there is understating of what is really going on offshore.

Guyana, as an oil producer, is not only operating in a state of thick and constant darkness. The Government of Guyana can be said to be a prime example of slackness, chronic slackness that has to be lived with to be believed. The counsel from many local and other quarters has been to go slow, and gather a broader and better understanding of how the oil business works. This country’s learning is not only steep, but it is long. The constant guidance, nothing but commonsense, was and remains develop local knowledge base, buildup local people, and grow with more and more technology obtained from our own sources.

Though the PPP/C Government has been toothy about how this oil is a partnership with the Guyanese people, it has discarded almost every piece of advice tendered, and pushed ahead at faster and faster speeds. With each new project given the green light to go ahead, Guyana falls farther behind. We do not a large workforce (capacity) to begin with, which means that the few available are spread even more thinly. The country drops back some more, the centre that should hold firm grows weaker.

The big chiefs at ExxonMobil have to be besides themselves with joy over their unbelievable strokes of repeated good fortune in the Guyana sphere of their operations. For the company has the State and its oil stewards eating out its hands, and whatever is fed to them. There is this bizarre environment of a government that is ignorant of the true extent of the wealth that is in its hands, and the actions that are required to give it some semblance of control. Yet it gallops merrily along, despite being blinded by the glaring lack of its own information and intelligence on matters involving the national patrimony.

There was a Guyanese presence on the oil rigs at one time. Either ExxonMobil or the PPP/C Government did not care too much for that, so they were recalled. Thus, Guyana expands its dependency on ExxonMobil, which is only too thrilled to do its part, its clever way.

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