Above expectation

Nov 27, 2024 Editorial, News

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…Editorial

Kaieteur News- Everything that ExxonMobil touches in Guyana rewards the corporation above and beyond.  Expectations were already set high from the beginning, and they just keep going higher and higher in results.  ExxonMobil’s CEO, Darren Woods, has to be one proud, joyful oil boss.  Whatever he finalizes in Guyana bears rich fruit, which is the CEO’s delight to share with the world.  Company workers, suppliers, shipbuilders, and investors love what they are hearing about Guyana’s oilfields.  In Woods’s own words, the Payara project in Guyana “continues to perform above investment basis…”

Investment basis, simply said, is what is put into any kind of project, and right beside that is the string of expectations.  Those range from recovery of outlay, and the estimated returns (profits) using different scenarios that start at moderate, and which could climb to exceptional.  Exceptional is what has become the ordinary in the production and profits for ExxonMobil from Guyana’s oil.  Investors in this high-performing American oil company must be pinching themselves: can this be happening?  Is Guyana this good that the CEO could report so boldly, so inspiringly?  It is really happening, which is why Darren Woods is on top of the oil world.  He has the perfect combination of helpful circumstances in Guyana.  There is a prostrate PPPC Government, with many political leaders committed to feebleness and the fullest collaboration.  Institutions saddled with the responsibility to protect the wealth, the environment, and the people have made comic book caricatures of themselves.  Rubberstamping whatever ExxonMobil pushes before them is now the established standard.

The three oil projects running at high speeds in Guyana, Liza One and Two, and Payara, have all be approved to increase daily production above the initial stated safety limits.  Liza One has been given the green light to increase daily production by as much as 33% over the recommended safety limits, based on the company’s debottlenecking submissions.  Guyana is not in a position to monitor and manage its oil patrimony at even a reasonably robust level, but it is agreeing to give ExxonMobil the freedom to push its daily oil production to dangerous heights.  The Payara project is already exceeding the stated daily production safety limit by over 13%, but ExxonMobil wants to go still higher by another 9%.  We can almost guarantee that Payara production will be approved for 270,000 barrels daily, or almost 23% over what is safe.  Is it any surprise that Darren woods is dripping with excitement over what he rightly calls, “the world’s premier deepwater development?”

Amid all this gilt-edged talk from Woods about Guyana’s oil, there is a blinding contradiction, the irony of Guyanese reality.  Amid “above investment basis” (higher than expected) and “the world’s premier deepwater development (Guyana’s offshore oilfields), there is grinding poverty.  ExxonMobil grabs the cream of the profits; Guyana gets what is nothing but a pittance.  ExxonMobil can announce rich dividends in no small part because of its profits and other cash inflows from Guyana.  Meanwhile, at the other end of the world’s top deepwater oil projects, Guyanese are perched on the edge of their seats waiting for a paltry cash handout.  To emphasize the contrast, what is unreal about Guyana’s oil, ExxonMobil is rolling in profits, while close to half of the Guyanese population, the true owners of this great wealth, is rolling in poverty.  The words flow from ExxonMobil’s CEO like an unchecked stream, so powerful is his position.  On the other hand, Guyana’s President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo are reduced to embarrassing stuttering and backpedaling when forced to say something about this country’s oil wealth.

Political leaders across the board in Guyana should be powering ahead because of one of the great natural resource endowments in recent times, in the history of oil.  Most shamefully, they prefer to roll themselves into a ball and be pushed around or kicked about by ExxonMobil’s Woods and local executioner, Alistair Routledge.  ExxonMobil’s expectations in Guyana are already high, and it still aspires to greater heights.  Other than the well-connected, the PPPC Government cronies and other cabals in its circle, the expectations of the ordinary Guyanese are now at rock-bottom.  When their expectations should know no limit, their reality is the opposite.

(Above expectation)

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• American oil, ExxonMobil, Payara project, PPPC Government, Rubberstamping

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