We, negligent – who seh suh

May 23, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – We, negligent?  “No way, nah!  Somebaady in Guyana gah dah wan wrang.  De biggest maan in Bee Gee seh dat producing ile pass de recommended limit is safe.  So, we submit learned judge of Jamaica or America (or wherever) that Exxon could not have done wrong, been negligent.  Not when the boss, the most senior official representative of the Guyanese nation, himself swore that it is was ‘safe’.”  He convinced himself about that for whatever reason, and clearly, it would be a travesty of justice to consign this business of negligence to Exxon, or any insurance company.  Neither willful negligence nor gross nor any of its cousins.  Our reports and records are as clear as the brightest crystal chandelier.  Limits were identified and shared, risks pointed out, and all in black and white.

Nothing was held back.  Guyana was given all the time and every opportunity to check risks and exposures for itself but chose to proceed at breakneck speed with production.  It did not restrain accelerated oil production.  Just get the oil out from under the damn ground could be said to have been the mantra of the oil emperor.  How could any of that be deemed to be irresponsible or reckless on Exxon’s part?  It would be trampling upon natural justice to look at insurance companies to right the egregious wrongs of Guyanese leaders, to compensate for their indifference.  Clearly, it would be unconscionable for Guyana to dump this self-inflicted monstrosity on Exxon.  If we may say so, Guyanese are, at least one is, presumptuous.  A lesson from life is that the best of those who run the streets together (if I may – partners in crime) often ‘leggo’ one another in times of crisis.  It is every man jack (sub a couple of other well-known names) for himself.

I must thank Chris Ram, attorney-at-law and Chartered Accountant and columnist and one committed to the roles of researcher and thinker, for I didn’t look at this in this way before.  Get some sleep, brother.  The road is long, and it will get rockier, with thorns and thistles on the sides.  They bristle with venom and prickle with anger.  Porcupines have nothing on them.  If somebody was interfering with my meal ticket, I would too.  But back to this matter about oil companies and insurance companies and white-shoe law companies.  Anil had better learn to play golf and get himself invited to one of those old money clubs.  That’s where justice is served.  Visions passed around.  Territory carved out.  Ways found to compromise national leaders in Third World countries.  The soft-spoken, graybeards know the kind, and how to get to them, so that they can say anything, do anything, while being for nothing.  For their own people.  If any Guyanese thinks that the top insurance companies will payout to Guyana in the event of an oil spill, without a war, then they should stick to the brown rum and bush rum, that is being doled out to them.

There is a long trail of warm and cheery support, unstinted virtual endorsements, of what Exxon is doing here.  I have the dubious duty of introducing my own Environmental Protection Agency as Billboard Number 1.  In addition, I am sorry, there is a subject minister who has been Gulliverian in his protestations, a sleepwalker in his vigilance.  Still further, there is the Guyanese mandarin of mud, this country’s emperor of oil, and there was none more unmoving about what was put before him, none more gung-ho about getting the oil out of the ground.  It is all present on paper.  As he went, Guyana went.  As Guyana went, Exxon was only too delighted to lend a cooperative hand.  Of course, as sensible citizens of Guyana know, the roles were reversed, with Exxon calling the shots.  But where is that documented?  What relevance, what admissibility, does such have in a court of law?

When the local leaders had to be aggressive and conservative at the same time, the latter was dismissed out of hand.  In their time, a set of Black Americans posited burn, baby, burn as their guiding star.  In Guyana, in this time of oil, the gospel was pump, baby, pump.  So, who threw caution to the four winds and left their people exposed?  That level of willful indifference to risks, gross mismanagement of responsibilities, and reckless disregard for due care, can never be placed on the head of Exxon.  And, as an extension, on the checkbook of any insurance company.  Gayana as owner of its oil asset, leaders as the first and chief controllers of the people’s wealth, had the primary duty of safeguarding that national trust.  Leaders entrusted with national decision-making power in their hands must be first and strongest in wielding that power wisely.  They must be the last in line when risk appetite is considered, measured.  Oil companies and insurance companies are about their own people.  National leaders can’t be for people other than their own.  The oil contractor held the line; Guyana’s leaders sold their people and their prospect up the river.  For those who are unfamiliar with the term, up the river is where those sentenced to life in prison were sent.  Safe is sound.  Safe is sticky.  Frequently, safe does come back to haunt.

(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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