Arguably the most significant drawback for Guyana from the country’s successive oil finds and projections on the issue of more deposits that lie ahead is the attention that the country has attracted from both potential investors seeking to benefit from the business opportunities that would appear to lie ahead as the country embarks on a multi-faceted developmental agenda.
Indeed, it now appears that expert opinions and projections on both Guyana’s oil finds up to this time and just where the country stands in the pantheon of the ‘heavy hitters in the global oil and gas industry are likely to be the subject of both actual scientific probes as well as involved industry conversations, in the period ahead. Of particular interest here are the various projected rags to riches projections in the matter of Guyana’s oil and gas industry that have been continually forthcoming from industry experts in recent years.
Significantly, these projections are not emerging from the fanciful tales that had attended the well-known El Dorado ‘legend of gold,’ but from studied research proffered by some of the reported finer mines in the global oil and gas industry.
One of the more recent of the various rags to riches projections associated with Guyana’s oil and gas industry has come from Schreiner Parker, a Senior Vice President and Head of Latin America at the Norwegian energy research entity Rystad Energy. Recently, Parker made the eye-catching disclosure that by 2030 Guyana could be earning around US$7.5 billion annually from a number of oil-related projects in the Stabroek Block alone. The disclosure, reportedly part of a recent virtual presentation hosted by the Guyana Business Journal and Magazine included the assertion that the Guyana Government could walk away with “billions of dollar………. through royalties, profit-sharing and taxes from oil and gas production in the Stabroek Block alone.”
Parker has not been alone in making these various eye-catching projections and predictions as to just where Guyana’s new-found ‘oil wealth’ is likely to take the country. These, in a sense, have been good for Guyana, insofar as they have contributed to a ‘feel good’ type of optimism among ordinary Guyanese who, up to less than a decade ago, appeared to have become ‘worn down’ by the repetitive talk of the country’s ‘oil wealth’ that appeared to be going nowhere.
There is, decidedly, still an anxious wait among the masses for the ‘trickle down’ that is now anticipated given what is now unquestionable confirmation of our oil resources. There is as well a kind of double assurance arising out of the audible patter of investors’ feet and gradual signs of transformations in physical infrastructure that send unmistakable signals that something different may be happening. At the level of government, as well, there appears to be a preoccupation with changing the national mood, though, in that regard, there is still a long road to travel.
There have been, as well, undeniable indications of inward business traffic, with external business interests streaming in either to get a ‘feel’ of the truth or otherwise of the government’s open for business axiom or else, to ‘jump in’ immediately, busying themselves with gathering information about how to secure a slice of the investment pie.
What the ‘oil shout’ has done as well is to light a proverbial fire beneath what, hitherto, had been a somewhat sluggish private sector. What the country’s oil and gas global promotional pursuits has also done is to help to burnish what, up until a few years ago, had been Guyana’s somewhat jaded image as a member state of the Caribbean Community. (CARICOM). These days, we have become the most-looked-to country in the region particularly in terms of seeking to find responses to regional food security concerns.
Schreiner Parker’s research pursuits, reportedly, point to the likelihood that, cumulatively, by 2040, and given Guyana’s projected likely annual returns from the oil and gas industry, the country should be raking in around US $157 billion, a ‘number’ that does not take account of finds in other oil blocks. All of this, Parker projects, could, within the next decade, place Guyana ahead of some of the serious ‘heavy-hitters’ in the global oil and gas industry including the United States, Mexico and Norway. “Guyana will go from a frontier oil exploration player to a top five global offshore producer in the next five years,” Parker is quoted as saying”
These predictions and projections are likely to be among the more prominent talking points at next year’s February 14th – 17th International Energy Conference and Expo to be held in Guyana. Guyana’s hosting of this ‘energy conversation,” a forum for “energy professionals around the world” to facilitate “exchange of ideas, propositions, and plans for fundamental advances in the energy sector” is a reflection of the fact that the country’s vast oil resources have been deemed to be an integral part of the discourse on the future of the sector.
