From Gaza to Guyana

Dec 09, 2025 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – The announcement informing the public of the presence of an Israeli company in Guyana’s oil sector must be infuriating to large sections of Guyana’s population. It is both infuriating and insulting that a company with such national origins should dip a finger in Guyana’s oil waters, have any part in the Orinduik Block, or any oil block here.

We at this paper are that much against what Eco (Atlantic) Oil and Gas has executed with Navitas Petroleum, giving the Israeli company an 80% working and operatorship interest. After what Israel has done in Gaza, the horrors delivered on the Palestinians, the death toll that still continues, after a shaky truce, how can we be otherwise? How can any civilized person with a streak of humanity in them welcome an Israeli company here, when what has been inflicted on civilians in Gaza is recalled?

Pressure against the apartheid regime in South Africa was what brought about a change in the mind of an openly racist government, changed the direction of circumstances on the ground that devastated Black South Africans in their homeland. Intense and unrelenting pressure across many fronts, including pressure on South African businesses (boycotted) was what aided in the fresh winds of freedom touching the lives of the marginalized and perpetually victimized. After all that has been unleashed on the Palestinian people, regardless of their age, regardless of their being involved in the fighting or not, there should not be a single Israeli interest in Guyana’s oil sector. In normal circumstances, there could be ready welcome to any company, including Israeli ones, to be a participant, either as an investor or an operator, in Guyana’s oil bonanza, but what is happening in Gaza can never be called normal.

How can that be, when old men and young children are killed or maimed indiscriminately by those who commit what can only qualify as war crimes, and are not held in check by a world that prides itself on standards and fairness? The world that is in the West, and with America being the dominant protector of a heinous Israeli leadership that has broken all the rules of war, repeatedly and freely violated the restraints that separate man from beast. In view of the fury of many Guyanese against the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and at those responsible, it calls for a considerable amount of audacity for the Canadians (Eco) to engage an Israeli oil operator in Guyana’s Orinduik Block.

Navitas Petroleum has the millions to invest, and may have the required technology and expertise to exploit whatever riches lay hidden in the Orinduik Block. But for every Navitas Petroleum, there is likely to be at least a half dozen oil companies from other countries that could have fulfilled Eco’s need for a vigorous partner. When the Canadians signed their deal with the Israeli company, they had to know that it would be interpreted as a slap in the face of Guyanese, and that they would not react well. Yet, Eco went ahead and there is a new abomination inserted in Guyana’s winning and losing oil patrimony. Winning because it generates billions of American dollars that were once the stuff of the imagination and legend, but very much a part of Guyana’s reality today. Losing because, though the oil is owned by Guyanese, their governments have made decisions that renders them powerless and voiceless, in that they have no say in their own inheritance.

If they did have a real say, then there would be no Israeli presence of any kind in this country. When the Palestinians are treated like human beings, and not animals, then there could be reconsideration, even hospitable reception to what Eco did. The burden that the people of this country are forced to carry is one government after another being so poor, and leaders who are nothing but pathetic. If the present PPPC Government had so much as half of a spark in its upper ranks, then there would be strong public objection to the Eco-Navitas Petroleum contract. In fact, we believe that the Canadians in charge of Eco would have known instinctively that having any dealing with Israeli commercial interests was verboten.

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Editorial, Gaza, Israeli company, oil waters, Orinduik Block

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