Exposure and danger

Apr 26, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese still hoping for something material coming their way from their oil patrimony understand that as the number of projects increases, there should be more. This should mean more for them, the ones living on rungs lower than the middle of the national economic ladder. Though approved oil projects have gone from two to four, then five, and now six, the hopefuls in Guyana still dream for something from their wealth. They have been told to be patient, because in a few years, they will be rolling in the revenues maximized from production soaring. The estimates are that by 2027, Guyana will be producing 1.3 million barrels of oil daily. As Guyana joins that exclusive million-bpd club, Guyanese should be millionaires, but their prospects of attaining that height do not look overwhelming presently. More barrels per day (over a million) mean more billions for ExxonMobil, while the million or so that is due each Guyanese has to be received to be believed. Simultaneously, the more oil that is produced, the more exposures multiply, the more dangers intensify.

To say that ExxonMobil is barreling ahead with daily production offshore is a serious understatement. With each new oil project approved by the PPP/C Government, more revelations arrive on what the risks are. Prior to the approval of the sixth project, ExxonMobil was already exceeding the safety limits identified in Environmental Impact Assessments. Instead of giving itself a cushion by pumping within a reasonable margin of 10 to 20% below the recommended daily barrels, ExxonMobil has been bulldozing ahead in the Liza 1 and Liza 2 oilfields. The company claims to know what it is doing, it has things under control, and its technology and other risk mitigation measures must be trusted. Concerned Guyanese and knowledgeable foreign observers are not comforted by the company’s reassurances. They are alarmed at how ExxonMobil keeps ratcheting up its daily production numbers without much restraint, and with the willing cooperation of the PPP/C Government. Since the Government of Guyana is immovably committed to being a slave to visions and plans of the company, the least it could do is to get the best protection for this country should a disastrous oil spill occur, as new projects are greenlighted.

The recently approved sixth oil project confirms that the PPP/C Government is going the other way. It seems that the primary policy now is to give more and more rein to the offshore oil consortium for it to race ahead with more production, while lowering the protection barriers that must be in place for Guyanese. When Guyana should be more vigilant about the exposures from increased production, it is content to go the other way. What the government that stands in command over this national endowment is doing is more than what is cavalier, more than irresponsible. What the PPP/C Government and its leaders are doing is endangering Guyana to a frightening extent. A government’s first duty is to its own people, but the record indicates leaders going in the opposite direction. Any excuse has been made to deny Guyanese the security blanket of an unlimited parent company (ExxonMobil) guarantee, and that is the determined handwork of their own government. It cannot be defined, it is not quantifiable, it is too open-ended, and it could bankrupt the company. Instead of serious concern for potential catastrophic environmental wreckage and irrecoverable economic calamities, the government has been more concerned about what could happen to ExxonMobil, and how foreign investors could retreat from interest in Guyana because of nervousness.

With the sixth oil project given the go ahead, the posture of the PPP/C Government is that it will decide on how much insurance is necessary. A government that has betrayed Guyanese repeatedly lets ExxonMobil off the hook. Government leaves Guyana hostage to the company’s known resistance to paying when there is heavy damage from an oil spill. Any Guyanese who believes that ExxonMobil will be generous is hoping against hope. Any Guyanese who expects to win court battles with ExxonMobil for oil spill compensation is gambling with the odds almost totally against them. Thanks to the collusions of the PPP/C Government with ExxonMobil, this is the specter at which Guyanese stare.

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Guyanese, material, million, Projects, revenues

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