Dear Editor,
Matters get murkier by the day here with how PPP leaders manage our oil. This was reinforced by the caption, “Guyana sidesteps India oil supply deal -Report” (Stabroek Business, September 3). India? What’s going on here?
According to Caribbean News Global (CNG), and quoting the Chief Economist at Smith’s Research and Gradings and Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium, Dr. Scott B. McDonald, “India’s effort to strike a long-term government-to-government deal was turned down by Guyana in August.” Why? It is perplexing that the Guyana Government, which boasts of such ancestral roots, fraternal relationships, and reciprocal beneficial arrangements did not move mountains to make this oil supply deal happen. Now, if I were Indian leaders, my printable reaction would be these are brothers who are ungrateful, friends who forget too easily, partners too one-sided. No Guyanese would want to read the unprintable versions. We know how good India has been to Guyana (vaccines, scholarships, trade), and how treasured the relationship is. A situation comes to our doorstep for us to diversify the marketing of our oil, and to a trusted partner, Guyanese leaders back away. On what basis? And this time, who is behind the balking? Unless, it was pricing, then a way had to be found to do this deal.
We have seen how PPP leaders were compelled to remove someone good for Guyana’s oil oversight. We know now who and what has come in his place at the EPA, which has never come across an oil-related project (even unrelated ones), where its position is: let’s see what is involved here. Let us probe to determine what needs to be done to protect the interests of Guyanese. Instead, it is the opposite: carte blanche to do as pleases. I suppose if objectionable Guyanese were to so much as spit in the gutter, it would be all the way to the CCJ to punish with rack and ruin. This is what we have here for a government and for leaders, who sidesteps what is good for us, because they have dealt so badly, so dirty, so shabbily with this oil.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
