Introduction
Today’s column continues my evaluation of the “likely impacts of the 2020 global general crisis on Guyana’s infant oil and natural gas sector.” More specifically, the column focuses on responding to the query that captioned last week’s column: “Does Guyana’s World Class Potential Trump the Baptism of Fire and Brimstone which its infant oil and gas sector is presently facing?” This query is analytically an important sub-text for my broader evaluation of the “likely impacts” referred to above.
Readers would recall that I have been postulating that the metaphor “a baptism of fire and brimstone” accurately reflects the major challenges which Guyana’s six-month old production of crude oil presently faces. Chief among these are: 1) strong global imbalances in world crude oil, as well as broader energy markets; 2) the Covid-19 pandemic-led decline in global demand for crude oil; 3) the consequential effects of all these on crude oil prices, Guyana’s export income, and Government of Guyana (GoG) revenue; 4) the Covid-19 impacts on oil workers availability, as well as work arrangements on offshore platforms; and 5) reported start-up performance difficulties, which have led to the flaring of natural gas and production cut-back, due to technical breakdowns.