ExxonMobil hiding, Jagdeo spinning

Feb 29, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We cut to the quick: how much oil has ExxonMobil found in the last seven discoveries it has announced? It is approaching close to two years since the last announcement, and ExxonMobil’s silence seems likely to continue unbroken, if Guyana’s chief policymaker, Bharrat Jagdeo, has his way. The follow-up questions are why is Jagdeo consenting to being a part of this silence about how much new oil has been found? How can any national leader, with some concern for his people’s interests, condone what ExxonMobil is doing to Guyanese? How can a former head of state be so casual, seen as rippling with negligence, in looking out for his country and its citizens? What kind of partnership has Jagdeo consummated with ExxonMobil’s that facilitates the company’s resistance to releasing the new oil discovery numbers?

There are all these questions about how much oil has been found, but no answers. Jagdeo said that ExxonMobil is too busy extracting the highest returns from (“monetizing”) its discovery assets. Even to his own ears that should sound unconvincing, a dodge that digs a deeper pothole for himself. ExxonMobil would have been fully engaged in doing just that from the first discovery and the first barrel of oil shipped. The company has not been in the oil business for over a hundred years for nothing. All of its human and technological resources are smoothly geared to do that (“monetize” what is in hand) in its sleep. Rank and file Guyanese may not know much about that, but Jagdeo knows that very well. The world knows that ExxonMobil has the organizational apparatus in place to do just what Jagdeo has offered as a cover for the company’s secrecy (and that of he himself) on what is the quantity of new oil found in those last seven discoveries. Yet, there is Guyana’s chief policymaker Jagdeo unconcerned about making himself look like an oil joker, certainly a neophyte, with his flimsy excuses on behalf of ExxonMobil. A real national leader, one truly for the people, would push ExxonMobil to the front of the line, and leave it to answer the question about how much new oil has been discovered. Instead, there is this country’s chief policymaker running interference for ExxonMobil.

There can be no denying, after the litany of Jagdeo’s antics and gymnastics are considered, that the chief policy that he and the PPPC Government have settled for is to protect ExxonMobil at all costs. ExxonMobil has been described as a “superpower” by another Guyanese leader, so it has no use for the likes of oil amateurs like Jagdeo and other apologists in the PPPC Government to erect camouflages for it. The problem for ExxonMobil is that the more that it depends on Jagdeo to come up with these schemes (“monetizing”) for its failure to reveal the full figures about the seven new oil discoveries, the more twisted and the more untrustworthy the company looks in the eyes of Guyanese (and the world at large). The people making crucial decisions at ExxonMobil may have become so hardened by repeated conclusions wherever it operates about underhanded activity, and a conspicuous dissociation from commendable standards, that they don’t care anymore. Still, they leave the dirtier jobs to their local proxies to quiet their questioning and critical people.

ExxonMobil likes to fool the Guyanese people by holding itself out as a principled partner. It cannot be principled in the least when something that is automatic for the company is shrouded in so much secrecy, and to the disadvantage of the owners of the oil asset. Jagdeo says that the company’s time is focused on higher priorities. This is how small and shameless this former president makes himself. He knows what is important for ExxonMobil, but he doesn’t care for the Guyanese people to know what is important to them. That is, how much oil is involved in those seven new discoveries, now wrapped in a blanket of suspicious silence for almost two years. It should occur to ExxonMobil’s Country Head that these concealments layers leave both he and his company with a terrible smell. If there is nothing to fear with discovery disclosures, then there should be nothing to fear.

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Bharrat Jagdeo, company, ExxonMobil, monetizing, policymaker

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