Henry Hub, Rowley rub and Barry flub

Mar 19, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

H@rd Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I can identify with, feel for, Trinidad & Tobago PM, Dr. Keith Rowley, and the demands of travels. His job was to do more to get more for his country’s gas, squeeze a few more pennies and pesos from wherever and whoever he could get them. To live out of a suitcase, even with the best of first-class travel, top-of-the-line hotels, and 5-star restaurants, can be a drain and a drag.

GHK Lall

With over 800 flights behind my belt, I know what PM Rowley endured to do better for his country and people. There comes that time when chops and cheesecake fade before the longing for curry and cook-up, and one’s own humble lodgings and family. When duty calls, the bell rings, there must be answering.

What the TT PM is telling us is that the road to get more is long and hard. Refusal figures often; but more doors still have to be knocked. In the briefest, simplest terms, Henry Hub (gosh, it’s been a long time) is what T&T’s gas price was pegged to, fixed. As that moved, so did the collections for T&T. Rowley’s challenge was that his country was at a disadvantage, boxed in, comparatively speaking, with Henry Hub. It could do better, just had to, and he was bold enough. Take the fight on the road.

So, he set out to do just that: he rubbed shoulders with cold-eyed and hard-hearted men in world capitals. He rubbed his eyes after another redeye flight, after another stormy connecting leg completed. For sure, Rowley rubbed some stubborn people raw, made some relationships mad. After all, he was looking to get what nobody wanted to give up. He must have also rubbed and massaged his tonsils with Remy Martin or Stella Artois brews. Rowley’s problem was compounded by everyone knowing that he was negotiating from a hole: Henry Hub spot and futures prices. But he persisted and eked out some price improvements for his country and citizens.

My mind shifts to Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana’s majestic man of the moment. He is a dud. A blub. Jagdeo is nothing but a flub. Guyana is pegged to the 2016 oil contract with Exxon, and local badman Barry Jagdeo confesses to the world that he has lost his bulbs. He can’t see his way because he doesn’t want to find his way out of the despicable 2016 oil contract. When it is the Exxon contract, Jagdeo hasn’t just lost his light bulbs, he has lost what is described by another word beginning with a ‘b.’ Food for thought, fellow citizens.

Think of this fellow Guyanese: on anything and everything, Jagdeo is the loudest and proudest about how the PPP has done better than the PNC. There are endless (and skewed) comparisons between what the coalition did in its handful of lost years, and what the PPP has done since 2020. But on the biggest thing that the PNC did during its watch, Jagdeo sheds his pants and his shorts (and whatever else) and seeks the sheets. This is Jagdeo runner, Jagdeo the hider, Jagdeo the player. On the biggest blunder – a crime according to top dogs in the PPP, and Jagdeo, the biggest dog, the demon-inspired 2016 Exxon oil contract, Jagdeo flubs.

He drubs (frequently rightly so) the PNC, then flubs his own role, distances from doing his duty. Whenever the choice for Barry Jagdeo is between standing for Exxon and its loathsome contract and the Guyanese people and his contract with them. The Guyanese people have always lost. I repeat Jagdeo is a dud; he is the mud on which Alistair Routledge and Darren Woods walk on, kick around, tumble about, as they please. When Keith Rowley is aggressive and creative, Barry Jagdeo is reclusive and evasive, definitely offensive. A Houdini in the heartland, a Rasputin running interference for Routledge and Exxon.

If Jagdeo had any pride about him, any authentic leadership strains in him, he would be the most courageous fighter to conquer the contract that the PNC left for him. What the PNC couldn’t do, he got done. What the PNC couldn’t get for the Guyanese people, he packed his suitcases, like Rowley, and buttonholed international organizations, backed congressmen and senators against a wall, played the wounded and disadvantaged Third World card, and got it done. More for Guyanese. He had to rally sympathetic human assets across the globe to get Guyana’s lopsided story, a crime if ever there was one, and force Darren Woods to move like those forests in Macbeth’s days of decline. Jagdeo the dud, the pretended oil stud, takes the cunning way out of his oil challenge. He attacks and assaults Guyanese, even smirk as his people assassinate those who point to his leadership obscenities. What a clever fellow Guyanese have for a leader. I would have moved mountains, crossed oceans, to do better for Guyanese, if for one objective only. When success comes (and it must), then the PNC and all others who block my way would be vanquished for all time.

I am yet to encounter any man who aspires to be a disease. We have more than a few here who delight at that thought, celebrate that reality. Guyanese should ask themselves if Barry Jagdeo makes the mark.

(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.)

Dr. Keith Rowley, family, GHK Lall, restaurants, Trinidad & Tobago PM

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