H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – Exxon did it elsewhere, Exxon doing it here

Nov 05, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – It is fascinating how history repeats itself.  What was put in place and refined in other places before, that is the exact thing happening in Guyana today.  Big tobacco did it.  The asbestos people did it.  Big oil did it.  Why should it not be so, when big corporations buy time, make huge amounts of money on the unsuspecting, and look good in the process.   Never forget also, there are those individuals who are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to collect.

The history of Exxon is throwing money at anything and anyone that would make it look pristine, refined, and an entity worthy of credibility, because it has the work products of its expensive research.  Think tanks are engaged, prestigious academic institutions partnered with, and reputable scientists are recruited through a hazy maze of funding arrangements.  The funding arrangements are sometimes in the open for all to know and observe; on many other occasions, the covert is what Exxon outs into action.  The marching orders are as simple as simple can be.  This is the objective: come up with bases, interpretations, positions, arguments, and conclusions that contradict the body of studies and knowledge of others.  Climate change is a big, bright example of Exxon energized by profit visions, executive ambitions, and consumed by that plain old passion called greed, that state of mind known as hubris.

If some stretching of the studies have to be part of what is publicly presented, then that is alright.  If twisting facts and observations to suit Exxon’s expectations is what has to be, then it is what has happened.  Or, to say more harshly, if falsifying and deceiving have to be in the mix to support Exxon’s corporate postures, then that is what it has to be.  Now, the lawsuits are filed, and the way that this oil behemoth operates gets more ventilation.  As Big Tobacco lived richly for a long time and got away with at great cost to others, and finally got its comeuppance, today Exxon steps in that shoe.  Not for the first time.  In summary, it is the long and sordid litany of what Exxon puts out, attacks with, or defends through, i.e., the shady work of those willing to be incentivized to do shady work on behalf of the company.  This has been the modus operandi of Exxon in the United States.  It is how the company grabs hold of men and entities and use them as agents of deception and, if and when necessary, as instruments of sharp denigration of others.

The incentives on the individual level have been handsome, not easily matched by others.  Certainly, enriching enough to wash away any specks of residual honesty or call to a clean professional ethos.  The kind of ethos that would leave one haloed by recognition of ethical peers, and for works that are deep and thorough and authentic.  Where is the money in doing that, which could beat the cachet of performing for Exxon, and to beat what it has put on the table?  What about the stream of lucrative possibilities for aligning on the side of the company?  Should that be foregone, and for what in their place?

This is the background of how Exxon operates.  To reference, I urge every Guyanese interested in how oil companies operate to read the singular works of Steve Coll and Daniel Yergin, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his tour de force on oil, The Prize.  I also encourage my fellows to familiarize themselves with Ron Chernow’s The Titan, which is the magisterial story of Exxon’s founder, John D. Rockefeller.  There are the media exposures from venerable institutions that are unchallengeable and damnable.  With these as backgrounds, Guyanese would be well equipped to appreciate the battlegrounds of today’s Oil Guyana.

Who Exxon has slyly engaged, recruited, and let loose.  Which Guyanese have been only too willing to accept Exxon’s blood money and brightly betray their fellow countrymen?  Mostly poor the latter are.  Largely untutored the majority are about the intricacies of how oilmen function, and the lengths to which they will go to sell their stories, and to control the thinking and minds of locals.  With subtle or blatant deviousness.  Through the auspices of those who call themselves commentators and contributors, and who claim to be all about country, and what is clean.  Some brand themselves as analysts and scientists and community activists when the reality is that they are nothing but willing or unwitting closet agents of Exxon.  The package is opulent.  The prestige of being near to movers and shakers, some political, many more about money, and whatever it takes to get as much of it as possible, and as quickly and quietly as could be.  I repeat what was said previously: who has the money has the honey (and they can always find a ready pony).

Look at Guyana today.  There are hordes from the bowels of Guyana, who are of the slippery and the subtle, the rubbery and the brittle.  They are about half-truths and whole deceptions, and the beauty of it all is that dirty Yankee dollar is earned right here.  History does repeat itself: Exxon’s does.

(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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