Business: Texas style

May 13, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – There is a saying in America: never give a sucker an even break.  I present America’s Exxon masterclass relative to that standard: the 2016 Exxon-Guyana Production Sharing Agreement (oil contract) with Guyana.  That is a caper where one partner sees a sucker in the other partner, and kosher or not,a sucker he is made to be.  But even by America’s and capitalism’s ruthless standards, there is an immensely more sordid style and culture of doing business in the state of Texas, where commerce mutates into a dogfight cum firefight.Greed is the name of the game, and the cabals around the PPP Government are put to shame in this regard.  Business is gladiatorial combat, with the fighting down and dirty, and the dirtier the better.  Recall those fabled Texas oilmen.

For ignorant Guyanese, I give Clint Murchison Snr., H.L. Hunt, H. Roy Cullen, Sid Richardson.  Their standards, if they can be called that, were wheeling and dealing, double-dealing, undermining, betraying, during their era in the oil business.  These were the type of oil barons, who didn’t think twice about walking with their own deck and slipping a card or two up their sleeve for insurance.  Whether the competition noticed or not, didn’t matter.  This is part of the ancestry of Texas oil and gas.  Wells and pipelines and leases and refineries are only part of the story, and it is mostly tricky, dirty.   This is the kind of people that Guyanese hold in their bosom today, and they have not a clue.  Exxon comes from that type of stock.  Thinking of that GRA US$12.1 bn inflated customs declaration, and the above and much more are understood better.

Oilmen in the Lone Star State easily buy State House and the White House and corral the House of Representatives.  Governors owe them, and so do American presidents.  Remember George H.W Bush and George Bush, the Younger.  The history of both these presidents of the United States is steeped in oil lore, and oil camouflages.  It was why Bush, a Connecticut Yankee, moved to the green oil pastures of the Texas Panhandle.  To this day, there are many mysteries and more conspiracies about their oil holdings, plus the son’s ownership of the Texas Rangers.  Questionable business practices, dubious business results, and mostly lacking in persuasive power.  But the two ended up in the White House.

Before them, there were some even more storied figures, whose names are inseparable from American mythology.  Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston should resonate, one after whom the State Capital is named, the other has a highway and the oil capital of the world named after him. Texians transforming into heroic Americans.  Here is the warning bell for Guyana and Guyanese: over half of what was Mexico became a part of the United States.  Do I have to say that much of that oil that came afterwards is really the property of the Mexican people?  Manifest Destiny and Monroe. Mexico had some real desperados for leaders in the embarrassments of Santa Anna and Zapata, who only made matters worse for their people.  Guyanese should see a parallel here.  Land gone, oil captured, under the flimsiest of concoctions, the rich spoils of war that have never stopped giving up to this day.  From Beaumont and Spindletop to Los Angeles City Oil Field in California and all the wildcatters in between what became America’s sprawling Southwest, with mountains of gold in Nevada.  See why Mexico is where it is today, its people picking cherries in Sacramento and sweeping floors El Paso?  Oil is gold, and only the strong and the criminally callous emerge from the contests.  It’s just business, nothing personal.

Texas is the only State where politics could stagger the world with the sordid business of a lone assassin killing a president, then another armed manin explicably piercing the cordons and killing the Chief Executive’s killer.Yeah, they do things differently down there in Dallas and around the Rio Grande.  Then, a Texas oilman, the son of Clint Murchison Snr., was able to influence a close drinking buddy to swing the US Congress, specifically the Kefauver Antimonopoly Subcommittee to decide that Washington Redskins (now Commanders) owner George Preston Marshall “held an illegal monopoly” through his Redskins Radio Network.  All that was required was a powerful schemer (oilman Clint Murchinson, Jnr.,) a trusted middleman (Bobby Baker, later jailed), some cash ($25,000), and some covert conversations (helpful politicians).  American Football just got the Dallas Rangers, now the Dallas Cowboys. Incidentally, GM Tex Schramm signed a player already under contract with the Houston Oilers.  The point is that oilmen live for schemes like these, and that they reach the highest political levels. How could Guyana with the quality of fat-headed politicians present here ever stand a chance against these fun-loving, hard-charging, rule-busting Texas buccaneers?  The two leading Guyanese strongmen who throw their weight around these parts are empty suits in the hands of today’s breed of Texans, some transplanted, some adopted.

There is the man in charge of Exxon, Darren the Kansan; while the quasi good ole boy here, Alistair, sounds more like the UK than the USA.  I think of them as the James’ Brothers gang: some Guyanese see them as heroic figures, while a few others look on them as outlaws.  No local [or American] should have any difficulty figuring out where these two fine fellows feature in my considerations.  Where business is concerned, local political operators are reduced to wet spaghetti and mashed potatoes.  Check with GRA for confirmation.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)                       

 

 

 

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