ExxonMobil – all that glitters is not gold

Mar 03, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese know so little of what ExxonMobil is doing 120 miles offshore with their oil wealth. What the Guyanese know can be compressed into a taut phrase: ruins of ignorance. The people at ExxonMobil claim to be the best partners, yet they have withheld so much from the Guyanese people. This must be a different kind of partner, a corporate one that is cold and ruthlessly calculating, like one that would slowly, cleverly poison his sick mother or spouse. In almost every area of this nation’s patrimony, ExxonMobil has succeeded in bringing out the worst in Guyanese, while carving out the best from their riches.

The oil wealth of Guyana can be compared to a deck of cards. It is one where every card is marked in ExxonMobil’s favour, the whole stack against what could benefit Guyanese. Here are some random examples that emphasize the Guyana-ExxonMobil partnership farce. Before this country can touch one penny of its oil production money, 75% of the revenues must be creamed off from the top to cover the company’s expenses. Locals are not privy to what those expenses are, the legitimacy of its billions in US dollars. ExxonMobil has seen to that, and Guyana’s number one oilman, Bharrat Jagdeo is untroubled by the ongoing concealments. Guyanese are paying this massive amount in expenses, they are kept in the dark, and their advocates may be part of what could be odious trickeries.

Guyana’s political leaders are more occupied with protecting their own skin, defending where they are on the leadership ladder, than on twisting ExxonMobil’s arms and making it reveal what is really going on with this oil wealth. The most important thing in the world to them is giving Alistair Routledge the smoothest path, and the freest rein, to do as ExxonMobil pleases with this country’s great natural resources endowment. Bharrat Jagdeo, Irfaan Ali, and Aubrey Norton are peas in a pod where toadying up to ExxonMobil is concerned. Routledge has them on a string, and he is the master puppeteer, who doesn’t let up.

Why are there no meters at ExxonMobil’s offshore production sites? Do the daily production numbers, as reported by ExxonMobil, have any relation to the real numbers? It is a numbers game, and Guyana seems to be always drawing the lowest ones. This is part of Jagdeo’s leadership impotence, when he drags his feeble feet about installing meters to check for the proven accuracy of daily oil production numbers. How could any national leader, one with some honesty, some credibility, still in him or her, ever openly be a party to a foreign company not sharing the details of new oil discoveries? What could be so difficult with openness on how many more billions of barrels of oil are in those seven new oil finds? Why is it that Jagdeo and President Ali (conveniently silent) and Routledge are so slippery, so tricky, in putting those new discovery barrels before the Guyanese public? What probable advantage, if any, is there for Jagdeo (and Ali) to deny this vital piece of information to the people who own this wealth? What is in there for the governing party and its leaders that it surpasses what is to the benefit of Guyanese?

With the focus on numbers, how many tons of waste and poisons are dumped daily into Guyana’s waters by this American corporate self-enricher? Which honest government, which leader with some self-respect remaining, would not want to be on top of such practices? Would not want their citizens to know? All these components of oil operations, Guyanese should know. From expenses (legitimate) to audit reports (genuine) to production numbers (proven) to new discoveries (accurate), to toxins dumped (real), these are all the property of Guyanese. They must have access, they must know. No corporate and political leadership conspiracy should prevent one citizen from having the clearest idea of what is happening, and what this means for their hopes, their future.

Country Head Routledge loves to sell to the Guyanese people that his company must be seen as a trusted partner. He must prove it, and he does this best by releasing Jagdeo and Ali from the full nelson in which ExxonMobil locks them.

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Editorial, glitters, gold, Guyanese, Wealth

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