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Monetising Guyana’s gas

Aug 23, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – One of these days, the Guyana Government may get something right with its management of the oil and gas sector.  The oil is supposed to last decades, so there is room for continuing error, getting off the ground, and probably repeating the same mistakes.  The list is long and numbing of how the PPP/C Government ties itself into knots, leaves itself no wiggle room, and keep going merrily along the same losing way.  The selection of Fulcrum LNG as this country’s partner to help monetize the gas qualifies as one such development.  It is remarkable that of 17 bidders, the selection process zeroed in with an unerring eye on Fulcrum LNG and declared it the winner.  The CEO of Fulcrum is Jesus Bronchalo and he spent 19 years and a month in a senior capacity with ExxonMobil.  The dust had not even settled under his feet when he left ExxonMobil and there is Mr. Bronchalo back in the local action.

Strange things do happen in Guyana, and the arrival of oil has introduced a bewildering array of them on the heads of Guyanese.  The timeline walked by Mr. Bronchalo is tight: he spent slightly over 19 years with ExxonMobil and was hardly gone a year when the call of Guyana’s gas was too much to resist.  It may be more accurate to state that it is too much to explain.  Considering our choppy and less-than-inspiring relationship with ExxonMobil, its predatory one-sided nature, the last thing any government, any decision maker, in Guyana should be engaged in is another engagement with one of the company’s former people.  He spent too long at ExxonMobil, and he has been gone too briefly from it, to bring any comfort in this space.  Mr. Bronchalo was simply too close to the company, and that should have been the end of the story.  Given the treatment meted out by ExxonMobil time and again to the people of this country, there must be some drawing of the line.

To give the newly minted Fulcrum LNG CEO his due, he may know the gas business inside out, but to whose advantage. In the normal workings of business and its hierarchy for such an advantage, there are three candidates.  With a bow to human calculations, Mr. Bronchalo is the first in line to reap a handsome return for his help in monetizing Guyana’s gas. It follows that ExxonMobil is next on the advantage carousel, since the company has made it its duty to be in everything that has something to do with Guyana’s high quality, cheap oil.  And thanks to a PPP/C Government and leadership that is at its call and under its full control.  As a consolation prize, Guyana could claim its place on the third rung of whatever advantage there may be left.

ExxonMobil has burned Guyanese repeatedly, using one blowtorch after another.  It is perplexing that the Government of Guyana would give a former company employee of significant rank, a contract to monetize this country’s gas assets.  There is no choice but to face this hard fact:  ExxonMobil has mushroomed into a necessary, unavoidable evil in its presence here.  No one, not a subgroup, not a onetime worker for this American oil giant, should be allowed to spend one minute more than longer around our wealth.  The quicker that the majority of Guyanese come to appreciate this, the wiser they will be in identifying who are their allies to be trusted, as opposed to who are their adversaries to be watched like a snake.

Trying to relay that to the oil and gas decision makers in the PPP/C Government is tantamount to delivering that to a convention of the unhearing, unseeing, and uncaring.  It is intriguing, gives rise to all manner of ideas, that of 17 bidders (including CNOOC, a member of the ExxonMobil-led Guyana consortium) Fulcrum LNG came out on top.  These are among the mystifying developments that swirl around the incredibly rich oil and gas sector in Guyana.  It is so rich that it attracts an abundance of curious human and company specimens from all over.  One of these days, Guyana will gain some wisdom and do things right, with no questions dangling, no misgivings floating.

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