Alistair Routledge – an unsparing profile

Jun 30, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Corporate giants like Exxon act with speed, efficiency, and ruthlessness.  Exxon’s High Command recognized that Rod Henson was not the man to lead the charge in Guyana, wage unconventional warfare, take no prisoners, and then assume total control.  He had to be recalled; was in quick order.  Exxon needed an executioner.  Enter Guyana’s Lord High Executioner, Alistair Routledge.  In many respects, as certified by the far from complete public record, Mr. Routledge now functions as the Supreme Commander of Exxon Forces in Guyana.  He is nothing but an American Shogun in Guyana, a position further cemented by the ineptitude and impotence of the local Mikado, be he President Ali or Guyana’s Oil President, Jagdeo.

I put square into the face of all Guyanese, this first warning: Commander Routledge is the kind of corporate samurai, who would put one arm around the shoulders, while the other is sawing off the head of the person warmly embraced.  Can it be said that Excellency Ali still has a head on his shoulders?  I gently ask this: does Oil President Jagdeo still own what could be called a head? However that is defined, wherever in the anatomy that is found?  The antics and gimmicks of both national leaders confirm the thorough job that Mr. Routledge has done on them.  His company’s great gain is this country’s tragic loss from the chainsaw that he swiped across them.

The second warning involves Routledge, the Master Menacer and Bluffer.  There he was at his snarling best: ‘Exxon will take its business elsewhere if Guyana didn’t yield to the company’s flaring into the atmosphere. What made this bitterly unpalatable was that it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, very tough times.

What Supreme Commander Routledge has done to leading Guyanese people, he also has done to paper.  The same coldblooded efficiency can be detected in his management of paper.  One billion American dollars represent plenty of paper.  Yet the Grim Reaper Routledge has twitched his finger and almost seven billion dollars in paper invoices have been made to die an untimely death.  They are as good as dead, since Guyanese cannot see what they are paying for, thanks to their leaders doing their part to bury such incriminating documents in unmarked graves.  There is the possibility that the incriminating may have been cremated.  Burnt paper doesn’t give off any smell.  They may leave ashes, but a good hard down draft from one of the ultra-expensive helicopters would have taken care of that exposure.  To say this differently, the ruthless Routledge is a man that takes care of business, all considerations, all possible eventualities.  He knows what the territory requires, what is expected of him, and gets such done.  No questions asked.  No paper trail to follow.  No inconvenient postmortems.

Now that is a corporate barbarian and campaigner that I can admire, however grudgingly.  But only when that is happening somewhere outside of Guyana, and is being inflicted upon somebody else, and not the Guyanese people.

Weigh this.  Talk about international standards and best practices, and Exxon and its Guyana Country Chief are part of the righteous choir.  To be specific, Exxon and Mr. Routledge are the choir; there is no other.  The problem is that reality often contradicts rhetoric.  For where on this green earth is an oil partner given the freedom to block a team of auditors from peeking at the systems at the pumping and production sites either to obtain background detail, or to reconcile whatever it is that they have in hand and what is going on at Exxon’s offshore pumping stations/sites?  In which sovereign nation is such a development allowed unopposed by the national government?  Who owns this oil?  Who stands atop its honest husbandry, its principled disposition?  Clearly, no Guyanese can say with a straight face that it is either President Ali or Oil President Jagdeo.  And just as brightly, everyone knows and can say with conviction that it is Alistair Routledge who has the first, last, and every say in the stewardship of Guyana’s oil patrimony.

A new oil producing country would be sensitive to mitigating its risks exposures.  Mr. Routledge is the sole decision maker on what kind of oil spill coverage there ought to be, and how much makes sense for Guyana.  Somewhere in the hubristic swell inside his head, Mr. Alistair Routledge has convinced himself that his name alone is all the deterrent needed to hold a massive oil spill in check.  The fact that he has recruited most of Guyana’s parliamentary army to his flag of no parent company guarantee is an indication of two things.  The first is Mr. Routledge’s mesmerizingly charming nature, a fact boosted by all that green paper that he spreads in his hands like a pack of high-value cards.  The second is how most of Guyana’s governing parliamentarians were delighted to do a two-step dance at the bidding of Mr. Routledge.  The first step was to serve as pimps selling the virtues of Exxon; and the second was to prostitute themselves before whatever Exxon’s call of duty required of them.

When an invading foreign army can control the Guyana Government so completely, then what Guyanese live with is Alistair the Great and not Alexander.  When Guyana’s judiciary could be second-guessed and decision-shamed on oil coverage matters (and the chief lawman could be among those turning on their own and eating their own), then Alistair Routledge is due more medals than Idi Amin and Prince Philip and Audie Murphy together had on their chests.  He has been a winner for Exxon, a warrior for American capital.  To my immense disgust and regret, like Attila was to Rome, Exxon’s Alistair Routledge is now to Guyana -the scourge of god.

(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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