Muppets and puppets in oil operations

Nov 06, 2023 Editorial

Editorial….

Kaieteur News – The people of ExxonMobil Guyana Limited are having the time of their lives. The same could be said of those in ExxonMobil’s High Command in Texas, who are also having a grand time. The best thing about their fun and games is that it is the oil money of the Guyanese people that is paying for all of their frolic and fooling around. This is what an audit of US$7.3 billion in expenses submitted by ExxonMobil has found for different things and in different amounts.

The list is long and sickening, what would make honest people cringe. Millions for holidays and the expensive treats that go along with them. Then, more millions for dining and living high and handsome in fancy eating establishments. Plus, more millions for exercise classes and yoga to condition the minds of expatriates guzzling like pigs at the lavish Guyana banquet. It is eating as much as can be held, and carrying on as much as is liked, with the sky as the limit. This is how huge wounds are inflicted on Guyana’s oil treasury.

How can this predatory American company, which one top Guyanese leader called a “superpower,” ever be considered a genuine partner? How can any Guyanese with a functioning brain ever look at ExxonMobil, and conclude that it is a partner that could be trusted to be conservative, considerate, and credible? How can any citizen with a conscience ever have any regard for this so-called partner, and not see in ExxonMobil, a corporate betrayer of the Guyanese people, a violator of the worst kind of Guyana’s promise?

Look at the lengthy record of the excesses and extravagances at the hands of ExxonMobil’s people. Study the report of the audit conducted by Ramdihal & Haynes, Inc., Eclisar Financial, and Vitality Accounting and Consultancy (with a good hand from Martindale Consultants). It is as if this greedy partner, this prowling company, and this stalking set of people, were all trapped in an uncontrollable addiction by the free money, the easy money, that Guyana’s oil has come to represent. This is not capitalism at its worst; it is exploitation driven by arrogance and recklessness.

In aggregate, it is spending in the millions of American dollars to entertain friends and hangers on, while a sizable part of the Guyanese population is living with the throes of grinding poverty. In reality, the staff of ExxonMobil and its high society collaborators in Guyana are living on scallops and shrimp, while Guyanese are forced to rummage around for scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. No expense is too much to keep the expatriate workers in good mettle. It is of Muppets and puppets to the tune of hundreds of thousands of American dollars, what Guyanese would call one big pappy show. This is reminiscent of the high living of the lords of the slave plantations, while those chained to backbreaking toil and whipped into submission, were compelled to fight with one another, with the fittest getting to grab the leftovers.

The numbers (American millions) are there from the audit as proof of the animal nature of ExxonMobil. If allowed, we are sure that these people would not only cannibalize Guyanese while they are alive, but they would also even eat the flesh of the dead, such predators they are. Naturally, some logic would be found by ExxonMobil to link its rip-offs to oil operations in the Stabroek Block. All the while, the overjoyed expats at the company give a bright, white smile to Guyanese cooks and chauffeurs, while their minds work at warp speed on how to strip locals of their oil inheritance.

As the Ramdihal & Haynes Inc., audit found, no expense is so remote, as to be considered off-limit, something not to be charged to Guyana. The reality is that ExxonMobil does not operate in this manner, for its own history from other places and time exposes it, condemns it.

All this explains why ExxonMobil, with the shady collaboration of the PPPC Government, is so bent on keeping thick veils of secrecy over its billions in spending. And this points to why the richest country on earth has so many poor citizens, who are hungry and suffering.