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Upside down

Dec 20, 2024 Editorial, News

Editorial… 

Kaieteur News- It seems that everything about Guyana’s oil wealth is upside down.  The people who make decisions are a sorrowful sight.  The developments that come out of oil convey a story that is bright on one side and gloomy on the other.  ExxonMobil is awash with delight over Guyana’s oil potential, while the owners of the wealth ask what about them, their welfare, their benefits.

ExxonMobil’s top executives speak and Guyana’s spectacular meaning to their company tumbles out.  From Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods to its Guyana Country head, Alistair Routledge, the grandness of Guyana’s low cost, high quality oil is their biggest selling point.  To their investors and other stakeholders, Guyana is a never-ending stream of good fortune.  The big strike that delivers big profits for the company and more.

ExxonMobil is currently producing 650,000 barrels of Guyana’s oil daily, reaping profits at record levels.  In three years, 650,000-barrel output of today is set to double to 1.3M barrels daily.  There is today’s output level in Guyana, and Guyanese are still driven crazy by a paralyzing and fear-inducing cost of living environment.  Basic food items are beyond the reach of their pockets.  We interpret that not to represent oil prosperity for the owners of the wealth, but a horror for the impoverished in Guyana.  Yet, in this upside-down country, this is the upside-down reality of citizens where 650,000 barrels of oil are produced daily.  For those who think that when oil production doubles in 2027 that their portion will be doubled, they could be in for a big disappointment.

The leaders in this country are not even trying to push ExxonMobil to give more to Guyanese for their oil wealth.  The PPPC Government’s preference is to attack those who point to the weaknesses and betrayals of their leaders.  The government cannot even take a stand for oil assets paid for by this country’s oil money in the event of a major oil spill at ExxonMobil’s offshore operations.

The newest obscenity from the PPPC Government is that 50% of those assets may have to be sold to help defray expenses related to an ExxonMobil oil spill.  This is how upside-down Guyana is today with the PPPC as the government in charge.  It is so upside-down that even the political opposition is content to tag along and not upset any of the people at ExxonMobil.  The people who own the oil wealth are held hostage by the people given a license to explore and exploit it. This is the upside-down situation where the roles are reversed and both the government and opposition leaders are proud to say how powerless they are to do anything about it.

Darren Woods speaks with the authority of a chief executive who knows that he controls the oilfields and political field in Guyana.  He is already busy selling to his audience his five-year vision and projection, with Guyana as the centerpiece.  ExxonMobil’s newest estimate is 1.7M barrels a day by 2030, which is not quite three times Guyana’s current daily oil production but close enough.  The position we at this paper have always taken is clear. For each new oil project that ExxonMobil presents for approval to enhance its production and profitability, Guyana must use that as leverage for concessions from the company.  Such projects must be ringfenced and some of the provisions of the new Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) must apply to them.  To have a new PSA as the governing law over oil, and then assert that the Stabroek Block is exempt from its provisions reduces that to a joke of a law.  It’s another instance of how upside-down this country is where its oil is concerned.

Further, the fact that Darren Woods is telling the world about how valuable Guyana is in ExxonMobil’s portfolio of assets and a significant component of its plans presents an opening by the PPPC Government.  The Hammerhead and Longtail oil projects now in the formation stages must be grabbed with both hands to get more from ExxonMobil.  The first is more money, or those projects are dead.  Instead of the upside-down history so embedded in the ExxonMobil-Guyana partnership, there must be what is sensible and profitable for this country.

(Upside down)

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