Dear Editor,
Guyanese may experience a decent Christmas after all. After the barrenness of LGE (sounds like a barge, doesn’t it), there is some partial good news in the making. It is coming in the forms of light and sweet, as in crude oil prices. What a relief! A little less pressure in the pocket; less stress in the chest. Locals could use some of this.
Current crude benchmarks are easing downwards from that menacing climb for $80 a barrel and beyond. Thank god for resistance levels. And shale and the ballooning inventories too, signaling oversupply pressures. Though the Saudis have enough trouble on their hands with the Khashoggi affair, oil prices and price slides are too significant to be left unheeded. That is why I watch with some apprehension at rumbling sounds coming from them about production cuts. These guys are so huge, they can make and have made the mountain come to them. Oh, and the pesky Russians are neither sleeping at the wheel nor disinterested objective observers while the Brent and West Texas head slowly, but relentlessly south.
Rather selfishly, I prefer relentless at the present time. I asked to be excused in advance if there is a rare changing of tune in 2020. After all, Guyana would then be a robust supplier and not on the weak vulnerable demand side. But $70 a barrel and below sounds good right now. Good for December and the Christmas Season and New Year’s Eve. I don’t know much about the actual new year, as these things have a life of their own; especially now that, as suspected, the North Koreans did go underground with underhanded behaviour. I always saw (and did predict) two jokers in that lovefest involving a pack of strange comrades. Talk about jacks! But I digress. Anyhow, $70 a barrel is welcoming news ($60 is better), and could herald peace and goodwill on the Guyanese earth.
Goodwill could be anticipated from the minibus men through holding fares steady. Unfortunately, the same is not promised for speeding and the usual riotous roadway extravagances that have come to characterize the lit and decorated streets. Yes, it is Christmas, as I have been hearing the music in mesmerizing wafts since September. Whoever said that this country is not a merry place. Of course, the government has to be the grinch and spoil the ambience of the long lovely moment, the spirit of the season. Whether $70 or $60 a head, and with the usual increase in staples held in abeyance temporarily, I do not foresee any goodwill pouring forth from this scrooge of a government in the jolly month of December with that old calculated bonus to the joint services people. No wonder those hardy citizens voted with their feet: wee ain gwine nowair. Not when the moonlighting and celebrating were arrested. Their goose got cooked. And the minister of money (a most honourable fellow, to be sure) already has made his position clear: those December bonuses were intended to put the people against the people. My word! Sadducees and Pharisees in Guyana of all places, and playing with the purity of the nativity. This has to qualify as blasphemy of the crudest sort. By the way, sensitive intelligent souls should realize I am not speaking of the honourable citizen. Only godless communists would fail to appreciate his (non) bonus offering and not point the finger where it belongs. Still, I must say he is no Magi; at least not to the army or police.
A special word of thanks (I mean it) is due to that cursing cousin of a counsel for powering up the fairy lights earlier in the year with his vituperative fireworks that imparted a special kind of excitement and inspiration in the hearts and minds of the sinful. Returning to the by now familiar language of oil to Guyanese, that man of the court (a place neither heavenly nor divine by any stretch) made public not only the heavy and crude, but the utterly sulfurous, too. I must put my slothful self to work one of these days and compose a Christmas carol using such colourful lyrics. Since energy charges should remain unchanged, I would be able to take advantage of the light and sojourn my way to producing a finished symphony.
For those citizens who lack understanding of oil markets and their implications for Guyana, I suggest at least thanking the oil gods for the national bounty and the Americans for their oil muscle, while they wait to collect cash and subsidies and dispensations and (tax) holidays. All things are possible with oil, including that every day will be a holiday. Why wait for December! Why depend on the selfish Saudis and Nigerians and all the other oil hogs. Exxon exempted, of course.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
