For years and years, folks used to bet their bottom dollar we had oil. This wasn’t due to some geological folk wisdom, or from using some divining stick; they simply used the logic that if Venezuela next door was awash in oil – having produced it for over a hundred years – then it stood to reason that we had to have some also!! They swore rivers of oil were found underground, and in fact complained that those conniving Venezuelans were “draining our underground rivers”!! And, in fact, that was the reason they were claiming our Essequibo!!
Well, oil was struck in 2016 by an Exxon/Hess/CNOOC consortium, and the consortium has been pumping ever since. While the oil ain’t exactly sloshing around in underground rivers, it’s in the interstices of sandstone or limestone deposits deep under the Atlantic.
With Lisa 1, the first strike found 295 feet of high-quality oil in sandstone reservoirs. To get to it from the drillship, the pipe had to go under 5719 feet of water, then drill through 12,106 feet of rock!! That’s over three and one-quarter miles under the surface, baby!!
In the Stabroek Block – leased since 1999 – the conglomerate that had included Shell in the beginning but which walked away – has now struck some 30 fields. It estimates there are over ELEVEN BILLION BARRELS of the high-quality Brent Light oil – commanding a premium in the market. For instance, Venezuelan heavy crude goes for US$59/barrel while our light crude snagged US$72 yesterday!! After five years of pumping, Exxon has produced 500M barrels at now 650,000 bpd, taking it to 1.3M bpd by 2030 and then to 1.7M bpd.
No Guyanese needs be told that we got a piss-poor contract after AFC’s Raphael Trotman flew up to Houston and was wined and dined. So, we have two tendencies playing out in Guyana. Actually, there’s a third, but that’s a crackpot sect who insists we must leave the oil in the ground to help with global warming!! So, what if we’re left in grinding poverty? We gotta save the rich countries that created the said global warming!!
One tendency is to demand Exxon RENEGOTIATE the contract – which might be the MORAL thing to do, but ain’t the LEGAL one. There’s that “the sanctity of contracts” rule that advises you just don’t go around breaking contracts willy-nilly, since no one going forward is gonna sign a contract with you!!
The other tendency – deployed by the Govt and some Opposition elements – says we make the best of the bad deal that has delivered US$5.5 billion into our coffers!! Not exactly a small change, eh?? We start getting the real big bucks when Exxon finish with developing expenses. And we sign better contracts going forward!!
…land acquisition
We’ve been a colony, and then an independent country, for almost four hundred years. During that time, we had to make a living by whatever means necessary. So, we dug canals, laid down roads, and built all kinds of structures – houses and factories and offices etc. We call this “development”, and see it as a positive thing.
Change is life, and stagnation is death; but change is inevitably disruptive. Take the building of new bridges and roads: these are necessary for the transportation of goods and people in a developing economy, but in a settled country like ours, building some of the roads and bridges would mean moving some folks from lands and houses they and their ancestors might’ve bought and occupied for ages.
So, democratic governments like ours have constitutional stipulations that demand persons moved must be adequately compensated.
Now, everyone gets emotionally attached to their house, but wouldn’t the average selling price in an area – the “market” price – include the sellers’ emotional disruption?
What’s the fuss?
…strike
Workers’ right to strike is their weapon in their struggle against exploitation by their employers. So, the GTU had called a strike for higher wages, and eventually the leaders accepted a deal.
So why was the GTU president suspended?
