Guyanese should understand the goal of the oil and gas contractors: drill, extract and burn all the oil and gas resources it can acquire whenever it can in a game to balance the demand and supply globally. Guyana is just a small fish in this big pond and this is why we must always put our best foot forward in these relations with the oil contractors. But unfortunately, rather than looking after Guyana’s interest, Minister Raphael Trotman has proven himself to be one who is more interested in being the greatest helper for the contractors rather than his country. This very act is anti-national and anti-patriotic and in some countries is tantamount to treason.
It is no accident that in 2016, Trotman’s negotiated contract was designed for the contractors with its two per cent royalty, no tax payments and all sorts of “giveaways” of the people’s patrimony. With vast resources at its disposal, the contractors have strategically spent their funds to garner, and maintain favourable political treatment locally, even if it means paying a local politician US$2 million into his personal slush funds as sweetener fees. The fact remains these oil and gas resources belong to the people; not the politicians. While the oil and gas fever is high in Guyana, none of that heat will benefit the people. Only a selected few that are closely connected to the Granger Government are in for Granger’s “good life”.
The nightmares
Some 80 countries of the world have their countries driven by natural resources like oil and gas, but from their experience many of them have ended up worst off than they were before the discovery of the oil and gas. Sierra Leone, Chad, Angola and Nigeria easily come to mind.
With oil and gas come many risks that Guyana is not capable of managing unless it puts independent systems in a place, managed by professionals like Dr Jan Mangal, who are free of political interference. For example, God forbade, if we are to have an oil spill in the Stabroek Block off the Coast of Guyana, it would annihilate the fisheries industry, all the mangroves that form Guyana’s natural sea defence and our entire marine eco-system with implode. Does the Granger Government or the developer have a system in place to protect Guyana from an oil spill? Not yet, but which developer will run into a loss on a project to clean up an oil spill? Never happened in the history of the oil and gas industry. Big chunks of the burden usually fall on the local governments who are usually too poor to do justice by the affected people.
Then let us explore the economic curse. Do you want to put Raphael Trotman in charge of the Sovereign Wealth Fund? Seriously? Observing him in the 2011 campaign, I am convinced in my conviction that he is prepared to take reckless short-term decisions that can be the ruination of the nation in the long-run (case in point the 2016 oil contract). I am advised; he is one of the strongest voices today to spend today, future unearned oil money as a means to an end when it comes to the 2020 elections campaign. This is the political buffoonery that created states like Zimbabwe. All we have now is production estimates and models that can change materially when real production starts and then what?
But the biggest nightmare for Guyana is the political curse where oil companies are prepared to finance political slush funds for corrupt politicians who believe they are the best presidential candidate the nation has ever seen because they did a six-week course at Harvard University. We all know that political corruption in Guyana has been endemic for decades and we must not fool ourselves that it has declined since 2015. The observed facts are corruption has actually expanded since Granger came to office; so much so that many are saying that our democracy is at its weakest since 1988 when Hoyte made the decision to return a system of free and fair elections.
So what does this all means in conclusion? All the fundamental problems we are facing in the country in 2018 can and will get much worse if we do not take some critical steps to bring the necessary checks and balance to this oil and gas development. I shall expand on those critical steps in the column next week. Please share your feedback at [email protected].
