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The sham returns

Jul 24, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil is on the move and following its usual blueprint.  The company is seeking approval for its seventh offshore oil project, Hammerhead, which means public consultations are on the agenda.  Ten of them are planned, with four of those for Region Four, Guyana’s most heavily populated center.  Public consultations for any oil project, particularly one as huge as Hammerhead, is a good development, could mean much for Guyanese.  But there is a limitation: public consultations are only worth the name when the objectives are to inform Guyanese, share the full truths of the project, respect the concerns of those who attend these consultations, and be about what represents a genuine partnership with Guyanese wishing for the best from their massive oil patrimony.

To date, we regret to say that ExxonMobil’s public consultations have been more for a show and little else.  The public consultations put on by ExxonMobil have been a sham, a joke, an insult to the dignity of Guyanese. On the issue of providing information that has meaning for citizens, ExxonMobil has been a study in disingenuousness.  Through what is left out in its sharing, what has been dodged, what has left Guyanese with more concerns and questions.  ExxonMobil has put up a wall where the whole truths of past projects have been searched for, in that its public consultations were more instructive for what was avoided than what was provided.  Attendees at different public consultations hosted by the company have heard that the economics of a project are not within the scope of the public consultations.  The nation’s oil wealth and among the primary interests of Guyanese is the money and risks underlying the components of this long dreamed about, now evident patrimony.  Already ExxonMobil can speak with confidence about how many more hundreds of thousands of barrels the Hammerhead oil wells will add to Guyana’s present staggering daily production total.  Hammerhead is about five years away from going into operation, but ExxonMobil can share that estimate right now.  But it refuses to reveal to Guyana how many more new barrels of oil have been discovered since April 2022. This is the wealth of Guyanese and the people at ExxonMobil have stubbornly rebuffed all appeals to share how much new oil has been found in the last seven discoveries announced.

The 10 public consultations for the seventh oil project, Hammerhead, would be the best forum for ExxonMobil to present to Guyanese what its studies indicate they should expect from it.  Frankly, Guyanese have had it up to their throats with disgust in how the company has concealed the combined billions of barrels found under this insipidity about appraisal process and how much time they take.  The same impatience and disgust are obvious with both Guyana’s and ExxonMobil’s dissembling through insistence about ‘focusing on monetizing’ known offshore assets.  Trickery comes in different shapes and forms, and has many names, monetizing meets all three elements. ExxonMobil is either about open sharing of information, and to the fullest extent possible, or these public consultations will end up being nothing but 10 additional farces that fool no one.  We at this paper have solid basis for saying so, since its publisher was denied answers to pointed questions about the impacts of oil spills.  ExxonMobil was so brazen, that reporters from this paper have been prevented from raising questions about oil spill impacts, or getting the ones allowed answered.  The record of ExxonMobil in past public consultations is that when obfuscation fails, then questions have been completely blanked out.

The Toshao have lamented the fact that their concerns about the protected Shell Beach area have been ignored.  Oil spill modeling has indicated that Shell beach could be impacted by a spill, yet the anxieties of Guyana’s Indigenous have been given short thrift.  Public consultations are planned for Hammerhead in the Region One area, and the hope is that what ExxonMobil shares there is not its regular absurd routines.  For all these reasons, there is little confidence that the 10 public consultations lined up for the seventh oil project will be much different.  We hope that they are, but limit our expectations, given this slippery oil partner, ExxonMobil, that Guyana has.

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