Introduction
There is one outstanding feature of the 2020 general crisis and its impacts on the crude oil market that remains to be assessed in this series of Sunday columns, before I can fruitfully turn to evaluate its likely specific impacts on Guyana’s infant (five-month old) oil and gas sector. That outstanding feature is the environmental/ sustainability thesis, which argues that, logically, the 2020 general crisis should be located within today’s wider global climate change challenges. As readers are aware, such challenges stem from, in large measure, the heavy global reliance on fossil fuel-based petroleum and its carbon emissions. There is broad consensus that the energy sector is quite central to global efforts seeking to combat climate change. Further, the petroleum industry is indeed integral to that centrality. This topic is the concern addressed in today’s column.