Introduction
In today’s column I expand on the reasoning I gave last week as to why I am urging that, there is no sound economic theorizing in calls for Guyana to establish a state-owned oil refinery to process (and thereby add value) to its crude oil production, at this stage of development of the country’s emerging oil and gas sector. As I have stressed last week, such calls emanate from an autarkic economic paradigm.
This paradigm advances the thesis that, “Guyana’s path for its autonomous sustainable development requires the State (Government of Guyana, GoG), to pursue a line of march that ensures, Guyana produces all it can produce”. To be able to do so, it must therefore constrain (legally, administratively, and fiscally) “foreign, ownership, control of decision-making, and management of its evolving oil and gas sector”.