ExxonMobil and oil finds

Nov 25, 2025 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – The slyness of ExxonMobil started from the time that oil was found in Guyana. The 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) stands as one of the earlier examples of ExxonMobil’s slyness.

The total oil reserves that Guyana has to its name is another instance of the company’s slyness. Taxes and for what purpose the company needed those tax receipts are a third element in the slyness of ExxonMobil. Fourth, new discoveries and new oil found present ExxonMobil’s slyness in another light. An operator, a partner, that is more of the sly than what’s frank.

Guyanese are not convinced that ExxonMobil shared all the details of how much oil was found, and the certainty of much more oil in the Stabroek Block, when the 2016 PSA was force fed to the APNU+AFC Coalition. The slyness started then, intensified in frequency, strength. ExxonMobil studied the Guyana environment, and knew that it could get away with the lucrative opportunities it created for itself, no matter how barefaced it went about pushing its sly tricks.

The 2016 PSA convinced the people in the higher elevations of this American corporate power that the foundations for unleashing an array of slick practices would encounter little resistance in Guyana. The company had it right with the politicians of Guyana, but it miscalculated with sections of the independent media, none more than this newspaper.

ExxonMobil could practice its slyness on the APNU+AFC Coalition and fool its members. ExxonMobil could take that slyness to another level, and transform the PPPC Government from the biggest 2016 PSA hater, to its biggest cheerleader. But we at this paper have never been fooled by ExxonMobil’s slyness, because the tricks always seem to outnumber the truths presented by the company.

Whenever a patch of new oil was found, Guyanese knew about it, and whether it had commercial prospects, or was nothing more than an expensive well that came up dry. Positive or negative, someone from the company broke the news. Eight discoveries came in close succession and the slyness of ExxonMobil took off. Where the company used to be forthcoming before, it now became withdrawn, as though the victim of some high-voltage shock. Or, it was busy spinning it wheels to come up with a plausible narrative, something which Guyanese would swallow in stride.

The sly masters at ExxonMobil found a good limb on which to hang the company’s hat. It was prioritizing monetizing of current oil assets, which was a strategy that few could find fault with. Then, to get a grip on new discoveries and how much oil they held was a lengthy and complicated process. Because Guyanese know so little about oil, a mongoose could make rings around them, from their leaders to the man in the street.

Those were the webs that ExxonMobil spun to cloud the visions of the people who owned the oil. It is similar to the slyness with taxes that were not paid by the company to Guyana, but for which receipts were made. What kind of corporation, one that is a global name, engages in that kind of practice, one that has assumed the dimensions of a pattern in Guyana? In the same manner that this oil superpower weaved its web with the 2016 PSA, and the last eight oil discoveries, it continued with narratives about tax receipts that few Guyanese now believe. When slyness is overplayed, people catch on, even if they know little about how business operates.

From eight past discoveries and how much oil found shrouded in a tangle to three new discoveries in 2025, and a thicker tangle. This year’s three discoveries are below commercial quantities, so little was said about them, other than to the Government of Guyana. The standards that Exxon had set before relative to new discoveries are now cast aside.

The company either got so complacent, or became so arrogant, that it didn’t even share the news of the three 2025 oil discoveries. In past times, there were announcements of discoveries, commercial oil or not. The new standard (slyness) of ExxonMobil is no public announcement of new discoveries, no word about new oil. When ExxonMobil thinks of itself as sophisticated, we see slyness now out of control.

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Editorial, ExxonMobil, oil finds, oil reserves, PSA

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