Dear Editor,
I shall be much more prolix than usual. Being in Guyana for a week encourages that. For the past week, I have been running Oil Dorado breakfast seminars at the Georgetown Club. They continue next week each and every morning at 8:00 with a Vice President, a Presidential candidate and famous Guyanese amongst those for a one hour one-on-one. But it has been a roller coaster ride for me from optimism to deep pessimism on the future of Guyana and oil. There is widespread ignorance and widespread prejudice about the situation. That needs to be urgently addressed.
A typology of reactions has become clear from the sheer oil deniers (and there are some) to the leave it in the grounders to the Nasty Exxon Imperialist tendency to the rip-up-the-deals merchants to the optimists and realists about the future. What is clear is the plain ignorance of the size of the finds offshore – 10/12 billion barrels already discovered, but with a potential of at least 15 billion barrels and maybe even 25 possible at the end. This is massive in world oil terms. The statement that always raises eyebrows is ‘One barrel of oil per Guyanese person per day in 2025 i.e. $60US’.
There are no signs of a strategy or even medium term tactics from either major political party. Far from it. Where is the thinking about the wealth coming to Guyana and what is to be done with it? Not in the political sphere.
The media does not help. It’s reporting has been piecemeal, rewritten press releases with little understanding of content and even less big picture context. What, for example, does ‘spudding’ an oil well mean exactly? Guymedia, it is time to catch up and time to put in some reality checks on some of the more outre claims. Look at what BBC News does on Brexit!
What I do now strongly feel is that the time is long, long overdue for a national big conversation on oil. Headed by a neutral person – Guyanese or international. Starting with a big, well-ordered public event and then dividing into two way conversations in communities big and small before coming up with a simple one page document within a very short time-frame.
The big questions that need to be addressed are: Just what do we know, what do we need to know, how do we get that information? On revenue: true figures of likely revenue, the flow of that, how it will be distributed?
Who will start and who will lead this big oil conversation? Leaving politics aside, why not a big media organisation like this esteemed organ and a big broadcaster. Time is not on your side. I have already heard the sound of several stable doors being shut and the whine of the oil majors in the distance. There is legislative anomie for at least six more months.
Wake up Guyana! It is your oil – if you want it to be! Take back control, as we say in Brexitland.
Yours faithfully,
John ‘Bill Cotton/Reform’ Mair
