I first heard Trinidad’s great calypsonian, the Mighty Chalkdust belt out his satirical classic “Three Blind Mice” from our ancient, hoarse radiogram. Sharply attired in a scarlet ranch-styled embroidered vest, the stern, hard-staring “Chalkie” is shown on the cover of the long-playing vinyl record sporting a silver firearm and preparing to shoot straight, given the winning title song “Ah put on me guns again.”
Referring to a party convention of the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) in which the country’s famously irascible Prime Minister Eric Williams supposedly slammed his equally strong-headed counterparts in Guyana, Jamaica and Barbados for backing out of a proposed joint smelter project, Chalkdust asked through his close friend, Ivan Williams, a party founding member, “Doctor, can you tell me why Jamaica vex with we?”
Williams’ immortal response to his namesake, as conveyed by the calypsonian in a deadly shot was: “Tell (Jamaica’s Michael) Manley and (Guyana’s Forbes) Burnham ah got oil, let (Barbados’ Errol) Barrow kiss me tail, oil don’t spoil…don’t you know Manley, Burnham, Barrow, they running bout only setting strife, cutting meh tail with Venezuela’s knife, did you ever see such jackasses in your life, as dem three blind mice?”
Given the 1973 international petroleum crisis that left Trinidad and Tobago (TT) awash in money, and the rest of the oil-dependent Caribbean countries trapped in a devastating economic downturn across the region, leader Williams promised in the stinging composition, “They will beg me again for what I have, but this time I am going to make them starve, to get my dollars they best think twice, dem three blind mice,” declaring, “Let Burnham keep he rice, ah have got oil, they will have to pay my price, oil don’t spoil, but is my own throat they trying to slice…”
The piece ended with Manley retorting the “three blind mice” were really the PM’s deputies, Kamaluddin Mohammed, George Chambers and Errol Mahabir, described as “spineless men of straw.” The plan to launch an aluminium industry in TT dated back to the 1960s, with experts urging closer economic integration through smarter production and trade. They supported combining the bauxite resources of Jamaica and Guyana powered by the twin-islands’ energy to establish a smelter. PM Williams agreed with the pair of fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) founding-states to construct it in 1973, with the five-year project to be jointly owned. But the dream proved short-lived and as elusive as true regional unity, with conflict between TT and Jamaica over the role of powers outside of the Commonwealth Caribbean such as Venezuela, causing the scheme to be abandoned.
The acclaimed title song and another from the august album, “No Smut For Me” would earn the perennially popular “Chalkie,” whose real name is Hollis Liverpool, his first Calypso Monarch crown in 1976. A respected teacher, historian and commentator, he would go on to record more than 300 calypsos and take eight Monarch titles, the most recent in 2017. Graduating from the University of the West Indies, with a bachelor’s degree in history and sociology, the Mighty Chalkdust also earned a master’s in African history, and a doctorate in history and ethnomusicology.
Now the mighty tables of history and industry have turned, with TT oil production on the decline, its loss-making State refinery abruptly shuttered, and impoverished, unprepared Guyana suddenly looking at dazzling decades of unexpected riches that are likely to exceed its stunned neighbours. In May 2015, the powerful ExxonMobil (XOM)-led consortium announced its first “significant” find after a decades-long search with the Liza-1 well in the lucrative and huge 6.6-million-acre Stabroek Block yielding high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs, about 120 miles offshore.
Since then, the discoveries keep coming. Just this year, XOM announced its 11th and 12th major oil and gas finds in the south-eastern section, Tilapia-1 and Haimara-1 bearing the common names of local fishes, and taking its Guyana estimated recoverable resources to more than 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent. With the country’s first oil well expected up with 120,000 barrels per day by early next year, and at least another dozen or so likely, some analysts predict production could exceed a million (M) barrels daily over the coming decade, rocketing this country from a nobody to a newfound star shining in non-OPEC’s (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) top ten. A mere two of XOM’s wildcat wells have missed, representing a phenomenal success rate of over 80 percent.
Just this week the Mighty Chalkdust celebrated his 78th birthday. These days Guyanese still remember the “oil don’t spoil” riposte, with the stinging crack often being quoted in letters to the daily newspapers as a direct attribution to Prime Minister Williams.
Yet Guyana’s previous President Donald Ramotar and his Natural Resources Minister, Robert Persaud want us to believe that ancient oil, tens of millions of years old, does spoil, given their hasty award of prized blocks near XOM’s lucrative Stabroek Block, days before the crucial May 2015 general election that saw them, and the People’s Progressive Party/Civic finally lose a 23 year-grip on power.
Stabroek News reported Ramotar’s denial of questionable conduct, follows public calls from this government’s former official Petroleum Adviser, Dr. Jan Mangal for an overdue investigation by the still-ruling coalition into the awards. Denying prior knowledge of XOM’s first oil find prompted a dash to grab the blocks, Ramotar insisted: “I was not given any other information, just a vague response about a week before the election, from Exxon. The impression I got was they were not ready to make the announcement because they were not clear but that it just looks good. They were not very explicit with me.”
He maintained his actions were guided by Persaud’s recommendations that offshore oil blocks near ExxonMobil’s Stabroek Block be granted to two start-up private operators within the two week-period in the run up to the last general elections. Ramotar acknowledged to the newspaper last year, “I know it looks suspicious, but I thought we would have won the elections anyhow and that it was just the continuation of an already started process from 2013.”
In a recent Facebook post, Mangal identified as an “important issue” the “highly anomalous awards of the Kaieteur and Canje oil blocks by… Persaud.” He charged, “These blocks should never have been awarded just prior to Exxon announcing its Liza1 discovery. Guyana lost US$100 Millions and possibly US$ Billions by these secret awards. Exxon knew it had a good well weeks before making its announcement in May-2015, hence it was in Exxon’s interests for those blocks (adjacent to Stabroek) to be taken off the market for peanuts. And it seems our politicians at the time were quite happy to defraud the people of Guyana so as to benefit Exxon.”
Mangal questioned, “why has the current coalition government not pursued this matter? Are they also involved?”
A few months ago, Chairman and Chief Analyst of the respected Scotland-based global energy research and consultancy group, Wood Mackenzie, Simon Flowers, enthused that a major new oil player like Guyana instills a “sense of wonder” on industry devotees. In an online piece last September, Flowers pointed out, “Few oil producing countries produce more than 1 million barrels daily. Outside of OPEC you can count them on two hands: Canada, USA and Mexico; UK and Norway; China, Brazil and Oman; Russia and most recently Kazakhstan – the only new member in the 21st century.”
Flowers concluded, “Guyana, with no upstream oil industry four years ago, has a very good chance of joining this elite group.” In a February 19, 2019 commentary, he said, “Our analysis of the upstream project assumes total investment of over US$30 billion; plateauing at US$5 billion annually in the early 2020s as the known discoveries are developed; all perhaps matched by investment down the value chain onshore. Tax revenues kick in from the mid-2020s and build up quickly to more than US$10 billion per annum.”
Flowers pointed out, “For such a small economy, the scale of development is staggering. Assuming oil production of 1 million barrels daily by 2030, Guyana’s output per person will be higher than any other major oil producer. A four-fold increase in the size of its economy over a decade is possible, catapulting Guyana into the high-income bracket.” On what we can learn from the current Venezuelan catastrophe, he warned against the temptation “to spend, spend, spend.”
ID thinks of the Guyanese proverb, “If oil ah float watah deh ah battam,” meaning “A little evidence can sometimes tell the whole story.”
