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Waste and more waste from oil projects

Sep 15, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Who cares?  Is that a problem?  Why is it a big problem, and who said so?  We can almost construct the response of the PPPC Government, and its enslaved Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to this revelation about one million barrels of toxic waste to be dumped daily into our waters by ExxonMobil when the fifth oil project, Uaru, is in full swing.  Produce water, oil and grease, chemicals and more to be dumped overboard in ExxonMobil’s offshore operations, and it does not mean anything to this country’s leaders and citizens.

Now, it is the same, if not grimmer, scenario repeating itself with the sixth oil project building steam to rapid approval early next year.  This sixth project, Whiptail, is expected to dump 112,000 tonnes of hot, greasy water daily into Guyana’s waters.  ExxonMobil says that all international treatment protocols will be in place.  Meanwhile, Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency has done the usual: slink into silence, and made itself scarce. Whatever favors ExxonMobil is greenlighted, what should benefit Guyanese is blighted.

Fisherfolk can kiss their trade goodbye, and had better begin the search for a new line of work, or new fishing grounds very distant from that fifth project, or far from anywhere that ExxonMobil sets up a base of operations for these projects, with the sixth pending.  The plight of the fisherfolk, their families, and those who depend on them for some level of ‘downstream’ benefit does not matter to anyone, nor the fact that prices for their healthy output would be squeezed upwards. Or that the Guyanese way of life, the Guyanese world that has always been known, is now rapidly become ancient history.  What matters is that ExxonMobil moves ahead with every project swiftly approved, every obstacle efficiently removed.

This is what the PPPC Government believes that it was elected to office to deliver, to make the interests and happiness of ExxonMobil its highest priority.  If the interests of Guyanese have to be trampled upon, it is unfortunate collateral damage.  Guyanese contribute to governmental slackness, and ExxonMobil’s excesses, when they bury their heads in the sand, and pretend that all is well.

Guyana is on the mind of the world, and Guyanese themselves are nonchalant, even indifferent. The biggest prize, the greatest motherlodes of wealth, in modern times, and Guyanese go about their daily life, as if nothing has happened.  Guyanese float about in their own world, while government joins the foreigners to betray them by selling everyone out.

It is where those who come from all points are assured of a warm welcome by a weak and woeful PPPC Government.  The PPPC Government clears the way, and gives them carte blanche to run whatever rackets suits their visions to make money from our wealth, and off the backs of the Guyanese people. The people who could make a difference have made sure that they lined themselves up for trickledown business developments to profit from the flurry of rich opportunities.  This is while the country as whole falls farther and farther behind, and is ripped apart, skinned to the bone, and drained of oxygen, blood, and life.  This, perhaps, explains why Guyanese are so sluggish, so lacking in energy and vitality, even when they are being misled and robbed.

For their part, the auditors get foreign audit work, the lawyers grab legal business that come their way, the business people form their lines and pick up their rewards, while the other professionals do whatever it takes to stake their claim to a wedge of the national cake.  They are in for personal profit, even when they know that ExxonMobil is the worst of corporate predators, and that its presence here assumes the insulting, and the revolting.

One million barrels of poisons a day for 20 years into our waters (Uaru), and Guyanese cannot get off their derrieres; 112,000 tonnes of hot, greasy water daily (Whiptail) and Guyanese are unmoved.  Mention the world elections, and they all jump out of their chairs, as if a powerful surge of electricity jolted them.  But for their own prosperity, they have chained themselves into a corner.  This is Guyana today, and this is what the PPPC Government cultivates cleverly, and presides over slyly.

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