We in Guyana would know by now that the oil and gas industry, like so many other phenomenon, can be a mixed blessing, even though, as a country, we are still well adrift of an accumulation of knowledge sufficient to understand all of the quirks of what can be a profound and multi-faceted transformative experience for countries possessed of the resources in question..
Our limited knowledge of all of vast permutations of the oil and gas industry, notwithstanding, we at least know sufficient about the sector to understand some of its complexities, including the fact that, first, considerations associated with the processes of oil remain in the sights of a relentless and increasingly ferocious environmental lobby which, at its furthest extreme, seeks a complete ban on the pursuits of the industry. Warnings about the continued aggressive pursuit of oil recovery are attended by dark scenarios which, over time have been given life by occurrences that range from the March 1989 Exxon Valdez calamity at Prince William Sound, Alaska to the more contemporary oil spill in Peru said to be associated with tremors resulting from an earthquake off the coast of Tonga and Wednesday’s destruction by fire of an oil platform off of Nigeria.
In the instance of the first occurrence the ‘spill’ happened after an Exxon Corporation tanker, the Exxon Valdez, ran aground on Bligh Reef during a voyage from Valdez, Alaska, to California. The Peru mishap of just over two weeks ago involved an oil tanker owned by the Spanish oil company, Repsol.
It is in circumstances like these that the dichotomy arises between what has come to be regarded as the near indispensability of oil to life as we know it, on the one hand and the visions of environmental apocalypse that are conjured up whenever events like these occur. Paradoxically, if these occurrences serve to chasten us we move on fairly quickly, unable, it seems, to rationalize the dichotomy between what is loosely described as ‘oil wealth’ – as manifested to the socio-economic transformations which the resource has brought to countries in the Middle East, for example, and the devastating, wide-ranging and long-term social, economic and psychological effects that ‘oil spills’ (somehow, the word ‘spills’ always appears to undersell the scale of these events) can have not just on a country’s environmental profile but on the psyche of the victim as a whole.
Since the pattern of these oil ‘spills’ suggests that the billions that are invested in safety-related measures have been unable to remove the threat altogether, one wonders whether the whole education process associated with oil and gas recovery should not benefit from a significantly broadened curriculum that takes fuller account of the risks associated with the pursuit by extending that curriculum into the public space thereby strengthening public awareness of the safety and health and environment-related considerations that are part of the ‘collateral damage’ associated with the pursuit of the oil and gas industry. Here, the point should be made that an enhanced public awareness of the huge safety-related considerations associated with oil discovery and recovery would, at least, create a somewhat more level playing field in the relationship between the Guyana population, as a whole, and the ‘experts’ in whose hands responsibility for oil recovery has been placed. This remains, up until now, perhaps the most serious limitation of public education on oil and gas here in Guyana, insofar as it can be said that such a curriculum exists, that is.
Understandably, the greater portion of the focus of local public interest insofar as the oil recovery pursuits offshore Guyana are concerned is centred around the material returns that accrue to us from ExxonMobil’s pursuits. Contextually, little if anything, has, in recent days, seriously competed for public attention with the various discourses that have to do with the significantly enhanced spending latitude afforded the government, arising out of the unprecedented ability of the country’s budget to benefit from a significant ‘top up’ from our oil and gas ‘nest egg.’
If no one is suggesting that we become stuck on dark scenarios associated with apocalyptic occurrences that not only completely erode our oil and gas-driven developmental ambitions but set our environmental bona fides back light years, it cannot reasonably be disputed that we need to move to the stage of a much-enhanced public understanding of the environmental/safety considerations that attend the pursuits of ExxonMobil’s ongoing offshore oil recovery pursuits. As things stand it has always been a matter of ExxonMobil more-or-less minding its business and we minding ours. Where some major event that has to do with oil recovery, per se, occurs, we will, in due course, be notified in what is referred to as a ‘structured manner’ about the barrels of oil equivalent of the find and simplified accounts of the complex process.
Peru’s current exchanges with Repsol arising out of the country’s recent oil spill which has ruined critical economic streams in many communities and wreaked what we are told may well be long-term ecological damage in parts of the country are instructive. Emerging from those exchanges at this time are issues to do with culpability and accountability, which matters, of course, usually proceed largely over the heads of the most affected groups and communities.
In large measure, the experience of some other countries is that the manner in which these matters are settled depends very much on the ‘balance of power’ between the affected country and the oil company. The recent Peru experience, for example, points to what appears to be some degree of pushback from Repsol to demands being made by Peru for both compensation and restoration. One expects, of course, that occurrences like the Peru oil spill and the ensuing occurrences can serve as important lessons for Guyana, never mind the fact that at the levels of government, the business community and sections of the public the over-arching preoccupation is with the earliest taste of ‘oil money’ and its promised returns.
But then, hopefully sooner rather than later, our sense of the risks and threats that attend the high stakes pursuit of oil recovery will eventually become etched in public consciousness, hopefully, at least to a degree that equals our present preoccupation with our ‘oil bonanza.’
