Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday reiterated at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, USA that the government supports the swift development of the local oil and gas sector as a means of earning as much as possible while global realities still allow for the use of fossil fuels.
It was one of the starkest admissions yet by the PPP/C administration, that in tandem with Exxon-Mobil and its partners, its intention was to extract as much of the nine billion barrels of oil equivalent and counting before the tide turns against fossil fuels.
“Because there is this Climate Change impera-tive to decarbonise, our policy is to get as much oil out of the ground as quickly as possible. It sounds a bit harsh for those who think you should be environmentally sound but that is the reality of it. We have to maximise the benefit from the industry and use those benefits to change our people’s lives… We don’t know how swiftly we’ll get to a decarbonised world but we have to make use of this period when there is still demand to get as much as possible out of the ground and that is why we support the rapid pace of the industry but it must be done safely,” Jagdeo declared.