Oil production, local condition

Oct 26, 2025 Editorial, News

From the side of oil, the news is mostly exciting and hope-inducing. From painful reality, a large fraction of Guyana’s population is forced to gritty endurance. Life isn’t a bed of roses, far from the kind of existence that every Guyanese should now enjoy, as a matter of the birthright due.

In 2024, oil production topped out at 225.4M barrels. Any country that produces a quarter billion barrels of oil in a calendar year should be a place where all of its citizens are doing well, share in a quality existence. When a country has been producing oil for over five years in the vicinity of that level, then every Guyanese should already know what it is to live at a standard that they have never known before. This is notwithstanding the paltry 2% royalty rate and suspect half and half profit-sharing arrangement enshrined in the 2016 ExxonMobil oil contract. Some Guyanese are living high, those in the cabals of family and friends of the ruling PPPC Government and, who taken in aggregate, total less than one percent of Guyana’s population. From that small segment of extraordinarily fortunate Guyanese, there is the superrich. Right below them stands the merely regular rich, and from there on down, there is that other segment of Guyanese. They are those who have so little that they have almost nothing, and this in an oil-rich country that produced 225.4M barrels of oil in 2024, when oil prices were at the relatively high average of US$80.7 per barrel. If poor and hard-hit Guyanese can’t make ends meet when such are the circumstances of oil, then when can they?

In this 2025, over three-quarters over, Guyana is poised to exceed total 2024 production with approximately 246M barrels estimated going into tankers. When there is a 10% increase in the production of any commodity that is in demand, and still at a relatively high price, the people of that country should do well. How many Guyanese can say in truth, and with conviction, that they are out of the poverty hole, or that they no longer sit on the poverty line? While there is considerable interest in a cash grant before the holidays, there is that cloud in the sky that gives off strong warnings that oil prices could continue to go down. The projection for earnings in 2025 is US$2.2B for profit oil and US$340.6M for royalties, which is just under US$60M lower than the US$2.6B total earned in 2024. What does this mean for Guyanese who don’t have enough to eat, who find it difficult to meet their monthly bills, and who live in a constant state of anxieties when they think of their basic needs and their obligations? It means more struggle and hardship, despite the oil realities that they live with.

Though there is likely to be more production, there is the negative of lower oil prices, which should mean less earnings for Guyana, certain factors considered. This is dependent on the level of increased oil production in Guyana, the competing forces in the world market through more oil supplies, and the impact on oil prices. We do not think that the prospects are that inspiring for Guyanese forever stuck on the lower half of the local economic ladder.

During the elections’ campaigns, many captivating promises were made by all the political parties. There is only one that is left standing, only one that is in a position to deliver on the promises made. The PPPC Government has promised more money for a wide array of Guyanese, ranging from pensioners to school children to transportation to social services, among other areas. At the same time, more infrastructural works have also been mentioned, which it must be said is where collusion and corruption flourish. If oil prices drop another 10%, and with increased spending promised on human infrastructure, then something will have to give, unless more billions will be borrowed. We believe that the PPPC Government will keep some of its campaign promises, but how many of them remains to be seen. The concern, the irony, that remains is that condition of poor Guyanese will remain largely unchanged, while Guyana is producing so much oil.

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barrels of oil, Editorial, oil production, PPPC

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