We have traveled some distance from May 2015. This week’s disclosure of the Longtail-3 discovery has not, unsurprisingly, been attended by a comparable sense of national euphoria. Longtail-3 simply adds to what we already know are our enormous oil resources and the focus of national attention has long shifted to what we eventually make of what we have. Oil discoveries offshore Guyana have lost their potency as instruments of political hype.
Arguably, these disclosures still do a bit to cause external investors to double down on their pre-existing belief that Guyana is, in a global sense, an eye-catching investment haven. There is also the role that the disclosures have played in generating a new-found burst of energy in the ambitions of a private sector that has cultivated a Local Content-linked tunnel vision which they cling to like barnacles to a ship. Everywhere, it seems, exalted ambitions have materialized. Oil and gas now floats around in the national consciousness on wings of social and political discourse the themes of which range from dreams of untold wealth and attendant development, on the one hand, and lingering concerns as to whether we have what it takes to get there. Those outside the immediate mainstream of the popular discourses wait for their share of the spoils too.
The legs on which we proceed are by no means the sturdiest. Oil and gas has completely altered the agenda of the national social and political discourse. The issues range, at the one extreme, from whether we can muster the technical capabilities to properly manage a potentially game-changing oil and gas industry, more
particularly the anticipated returns therefrom to whether we have it in us to create a sufficiently stable political environment without which our oil and gas dream could fall flat on its face. These are bullets that we can dodge.
National socio-economic transformation and significantly exalted external investor interest apart, Guyana will attract further global attention. There is the altered geo-strategic paradigm that emerges from the strategic significance that Guyana has assumed as a heavily oil and gas-resourced country. It derives from the antiquated but still existing backyardism axiom that remains part of US foreign policy. There is, as well, the matter of how all this will impact, in the longer term on relations between Guyana and her neighbours, particularly Venezuela, which instance could, for obvious reasons, become the focus of international attention.
There is, as well, the coincidence between Guyana’s once-in-a-lifetime economic opportunity and the global ramping up of the climate change lobby. The question that arises here has to do with how all this will or will not impact on Guyana’s foreign policy given the fact that, going forward, the country’s development thrust will have to be powered, overwhelmingly by the engine of fossil fuel.
It is the politics that affords us the real jitters. Issues pertaining to managing the country’s oil and gas industry have already become a matter of political cat sparring. We have already begun to hear audible prayers that our oil and gas bonanza, does not turn out to be a poisoned chalice. After all, aren’t there quite a few precedents in that regard?
