The machine that keeps running, producing

Jul 05, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana is righty presented to the world as the cow that gives and gives, with calf after calf and an endless supply of rich, sustaining milk. This is what Guyana’s oil has been for ExxonMobil, the cow that can always be counted on to keep on delivering. Guyana is an oil producing machine that just never stops running. A senior man at ExxonMobil said so himself, and he has only been here two years. It is enough time for his brand of superlative descriptions to be shared with the world. Before Philip Reitema, ExxonMobil Guyana’s Vice President and Business Services Manager, there was “crown jewel” and “world class asset” and ‘one of a kind’ from top company people who were unable to contain their joy at their Guyana prize.

Mr. Reitema joined the buglers going at full blast: “Once in a lifetime” and he was not talking about a newfound romance in his life promising eternal bliss. He was speaking of the probably incomparable profit opportunities for ExxonMobil from this country’s incredible oil wealth. Guyanese should be awash in the excitement of this ExxonMobil’s executive, but it cannot be when so many of them are hungry and unhappy. They are deeply resentful of the huge imbalance, the corporate thuggery that is now such a conspicuous aspect of the Guyana-ExxonMobil royalty and profit formula and results.

“We expect that the Guyana projects that we are doing in Stabroek will go down as one of the greatest deepwater projects in the industry’s history.” All the numbers from earlier discoveries, and all the expert projections looking ahead confirm that there is nothing compared to ExxonMobil’s Guyana oil conquest. What else can it be but conquest, what is more accurate, when senior company officials gleam with such fervor over Guyana’s oil? Conquest is further emphasized when knowledgeable people in ExxonMobil speak with such confidence about “one of the greatest” oil acreage of all time, yet there is approximately half of the people in Guyana, at a minimum, that are scratching about daily, like chickens, in grass and brick and mud to get by. This is more than a disconnect between ExxonMobil’s Christmas Season of unending good cheer and the gloom of Guyanese hard ‘guava season’ conditions.

Disconnect adds to the insult of Guyanese, it is a disaster, one that is aided and abetted by a corrupt PPPC Government and leaders with neither national spark nor personal self-respect. The people at ExxonMobil are on top of the world about Guyana, and the citizens who own the wealth that the company is boasting about find themselves pushed to the bottom of the barrel. It is an economic barrel, the bottom of which grows more crowded and more threadbare, with each passing day, as a strangling cost of living grips more tightly. While ExxonMobil’s executives are all smiles before the world, Guyanese grow more impatient and enraged at how the company profits at their expense, is mocking them.

In more ways than one, these investor-pleasing quotes and headlines from senior company officials do more than mock Guyanese. The true oil owners are reminded of the criminal contract, which yokes them for generations, and at which they flail with intensifying intolerance. Guyanese are reminded also of the embarrassing impotence of those they put into office to represent them, but who have since sold out their interests. The foreigners are floating on a cloud of joy; locals are crawling on their bellies. Meanwhile, their leaders add to their disgust by standing alongside ExxonMobil and helping it to twist the knife deeper into the nation’s gut. The first piece of evidence is how in a half and half partnership, ExxonMobil collects multiples of what this country gets as its share. Another is the secrecy that surrounds the billions in expenses that ExxonMobil claims to have spent, but which are off-limits for Guyanese to see. In any business partnership that is run in a clean and transparent manner, why would such concealment be even necessary? And why would the government of the Guyanese people partner with ExxonMobil to hide that from locals?

Undoubtedly, Guyana is a bonanza for ExxonMobil. What should have been a great boon to Guyanese now depresses them.

cannot, company, Editorial, ExxonMobil, Vice President and Business Services Manager

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