The earliest public disclosure on Guyana’s first confirmed oil ‘strike’ by ExxonMobil back in 2015, was, without question, one of the most significant pieces of public information ever to be disseminated to the Guyanese public in the country’s history up to that time. The news came amidst weighty social, economic and political challenges that caused the country to be seen, both locally and externally, as “going nowhere.” This was within the same period when considerable numbers of Guyanese saw migration as an appealing option. What the news of the ‘oil strike’ did was to create a near collective ‘rush’, a countrywide feeling that something transformational had happened.
Our earliest confirmed oil finds also had the effect of releasing myriad flights of fancy, one, particularly, that led to a robust recommendation that we simply effect a ‘feel good’ substantial financial countrywide ‘handout,’ a kind of precursor to many more longer term gestures of a more meaningful material nature. That recommended ‘advance’ on more generous gestures down the road never, however, appeared likely to fly on account of concerns raised in some quarters that such excursions were inappropriate. Internationally, Guyana’s good news was still a reason to remind of the country’s historic warts… Jonestown, rigged elections and a threadbare economy, predictably, being prominent among them.
After these had been worn down by their repetitiveness, the editorial ‘lines’ begun to shift to wondering aloud as to just how a country with such inadequate governance bona fides would administer such a sumptuous oil fortune. Dark scenarios crept into analyses of Guyana’s future with petro fortune in its hands. A few international journalistic offerings were somewhat more optimistic in a patronizing sort of way, articulating speculatively on the likelihood that oil might, somehow, fend off what had hitherto been thought to be a one-way ticket to perdition. Some of these thoughts came to become ‘tag lines’ through which to present Guyana to the rest of the world. Still, there are those who would argue that, to a considerable extent, our petro status has served just not to reduce the extent of external reportage on the seamier side of our socio-political condition, it has also sought to make a substantive point about our strategic bona fides as an oil-producing country. In sum, the historic ‘Banana Republic’ tag line appeared to have been somewhat rested, replaced by more uplifting coverage that had moved in the direction of a more conventional ‘rags to riches’ story.
On the other hand, the shift may well have been a manifestation of the reality that we are caught fast in ebb and flow circumstance in which the global climate change movement has, over time, accumulated considerable steam. However ‘chuffed’ a country like ours may feel about our ‘oil wealth’, we can never push what is now the rampaging tide of climate of change behind us. It may, for now, be dwelling in a season of relative restraint, its momentum powered by irrefutable evidence that climate change is real and that unencumbered fossil fuel recovery is hastening what is widely believed to be an unstoppable apocalypse. Perhaps, countries like Guyana may, after all, be destined for a quick petro-driven developmental kick, though the climate change watchers will vouch that such ‘feel good’ sensations are unlikely to persist for any considerable length of time before arriving at its waterloo.
Here in Guyana, the petro expectations of much of the populace have been fashioned out of ‘readings’ about the radical socio-economic changes that had followed significant oil finds elsewhere on the planet. Those analyses, truth be told, have spent rather less time addressing the socio-political conditions that can determine the direction in which our ‘oil wealth’ takes us. There can be no question, for example, than when next our country goes to the polls the considerations that have been thrown into the political arena by the country’s ‘oil wealth’ are likely to raise the political stakes considerably. One only has to cast glances at other countries that have had to address the issue of how sudden infusions of wealth can raise the political stakes, to understand the other oil-related political challenges that Guyana may yet have to face, going forward.
To understand the role that infusions of vast wealth can play in altering countries’ socio-political timbre, we need look no further than the extant circumstances of our neighbour to the west, Venezuela. Some of this analysis also applies in the instance of our fellow CARICOM member country, Trinidad and Tobago and certainly, in the Middle East, where hitherto impoverished ‘desert kingdoms’ have used their ‘petro clout’ to draw attention to themselves in ways which, at one point, were seen by the rest of the world- as more than a trifle outlandish. That is not, one feels, the direction in which Guyana wants to be going, never mind the fact that there may well be an argument for asserting that the writing may well be on the wall.
The Guyana experience has always been much more than that of a ‘hedging of bets.’ If we had never ceased to banish the fossil fuel ‘dream’ from our socio-political thinking, we have, nonetheless, persisted in pressing our agricultural sector into service. Up to this point, at least, it has kept us going. One suspects that in the Guyana pecking order, fossil fuel will not rise at the expense of the agricultural sector. Such an eventuality will amount to an act of unfathomable folly, given the food security salvos that continues to be fired across the bow of the Caribbean. Here, Guyana’s approach has always been (or at least so it has seemed) to be a matter of a hedging of bets. While the historical evidence has been that we have never let go of the longstanding ‘oil dream,’ we have continued, simultaneously, to press our agricultural sector into service, seemingly understanding only too well, that nourishing ourselves is a prerequisite to taking advantage of our oil resources. Here, one might even argue that it has been our ability to feed ourselves, up to this time, that has allowed us to witness the realization of our petro dream.
