No conflict of interest

Jul 13, 2024 Editorial

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Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil’s Guyana President Alistair Routledge continues to expand his already oversized local footprint.  He has erected billboards at strategic points in Guyana that have deceived Guyanese about what ExxonMobil means for them. Mr. Routledge had shown his face in cricketing events, an insult to local and regional sporting culture.  It would not be an exaggeration to think that Mr. Routledge would have in his upcoming schedule of activities to visit Guyana’s churches, mandirs, and mosques to sell the wonders of ExxonMobil to naïve Guyanese.  There Guyanese operating on the sly marketing ExxonMobil to gullible Guyanese.  In sum, the leading man from the biggest corporate exploiter of (and predator in) Guyana is doing what he wants, playing the games that he wishes, with Guyanese.  Truth be told, there is no limit to where Mr. Routledge can go, what he can say, and what he makes it his business to do.  Not content with carting away the precious oil wealth of Guyana for a pittance, ExxonMobil’s President Routledge has plunged into Guyana’s politics.

According to Routledge, AFC Leader, Mr. Nigel Hughes, has no conflict of interest, despite his attorney-client relationship with ExxonMobil.  Hughes has an office in Texas to facilitate a smoother representation of his client, ExxonMobil.  Normally, such relationships pose no issue.  But Mr. Hughes is running for the highest office in Guyana.  It is a can of worms, and they are not swimming in syrup. Concerns have been raised in several quarters in Guyana about the clash embodied in this specific legal relationship of Hughes, while he is running for the top national leadership office.  Reasonable people and common sense could lead to one conclusion only: there is a conflict of interest.  It looks bad; it is bad.  Whether in his Texas law office, or in his Guyana office, Mr. Hughes and ExxonMobil’s executives would be discussing oil.  Guyana is oil and oil is Guyana presently, and ExxonMobil is in the middle of both, if not on top.  But Mr. Alistair Routledge is telling the world that there is no conflict.  The ExxonMobil Guyana President is sure to know more about oil operations than most Guyanese do, both the clean side and the dark side.  But no matter how much he flatters himself that he knows politics, especially Guyana’s politics, all he does is fool himself.

Of all the places in Guyana for Mr. Routledge to go, he chooses its politics.  This man and this American oil company are so powerful that even the omnipotent Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana’s chief policymaker cannot limit him as to what he does here, including that he removes those offending, misleading billboards.  Mr. Routledge has been as hard as steel and pricklier than a porcupine on the issue of renegotiating the despicable 2016 Production Sharing Agreement.  His company foisted that repugnance upon an unsuspecting Guyana, through the incompetence of the APNU+AFC Coalition government.  There will be no renegotiating of the 2016 contract, he thunders, and that is it, final.  Notwithstanding that the contract has a clause which provides for any amendments (renegotiation, by another word) once all involved parties agree to such a development.

Naturally, taking the position (no conflict of interest) that he does is favourable to ExxonMobil’s interests.  What could be a better development in the local environment than to have the company’s Guyanese counsel sitting in State House and calling the shots on everything?  Mr. Routledge has either exaggerated his intelligence, or contemptuously dismissed that of Guyanese.  This is inevitable when the government of the day meekly surrenders to an invading superpower like ExxonMobil.  When national leaders exist in virtual subjection to someone possessing the arrogance of Routledge.  He empowers himself to take a deep dive into domestic matters, without a care to local sensitivities, with none more sensitively poised than national politics.  Mr. Routledge is now on record with his “no conflict of interest” creativity, while Mr. Hughes had his own concoction with an oil and gas committee.  What he wants Guyanese to believe is that he will divest himself of the immense oil portfolio.  This is more embarrassing than his hilarious 34-seat innovation during the last elections.  He represents ExxonMobil (counsel), he represents himself (ambitions).  Who best represents Guyana’s patrimony?

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• Alistair Routledge, Editorial, ExxonMobil, Guyana, President

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