The search for oil in Guyana: Pa

But for the name “British Guiana” the title in the image above could have been written in 2016. Yet, this eerily contemporary statement actually came from a Daily Chronicle editorial published on November 18, 1930, some 86 years ago. The editorial called on British Guianese to be “oil minded” as “the first stepping stone to progress along the lines of oil development…” adding that “there is a fair prospect of the colony developing a lucrative oil industry…”

It urged “every man, woman and child” to “think oil, dream oil, and co-operate in virile campaigns with the object of inducing our masters at Downing Street to lift the pernicious ban.” The ban or restriction in question was a likely reference to the British (Mineral Oil) Regulations of 1912. This restriction was aimed at foreign companies and citizens other than “British subjects” and applied to the “transfer of mineral-oil rights and property to aliens.” No one can say for sure what prevented the exploration and development of oil in British Guiana at that time. Perhaps British geo-political caution was one factor. Then the First World War stepped in and new directions and geopolitical distractions turned Britain and other potential prospectors away from British Guiana to the Middle East. It appears from press reports that by 1930 Britain relaxed the restriction on the search for petroleum in the colony by foreigners.

A Guyanese engineer, JP Croal, who worked for Gulf Oil in Venezuela, was quoted by the Daily Chronicle as exhorting the colony to drill for oil in British Guiana. Croal complained about British Guiana’s lost opportunities and invited “public men, political agitators and political parasites, doctors, lawyers, merchants, managers, clerks, schoolmasters (who are particularly tasked to drive the idea in the heads of the pupils), washerwomen, fishmongers, and all and sundry…” to ask him questions about oil’s potential in the colony. Meanwhile Venezuela, at the time Croal was writing, was already producing oil under its dictator Juan Vicente Gomez. In fact, Venezuela had moved from producing 1.4 million barrels of oil in 1921 to 13.7 million barrels by 1929, a gigantic production leap echoed by Saudi Arabia in 1930 where British negotiators persuaded the then King Saud to open up oil concessions. At first the cautious King Saud was reportedly only intent on pursuing water wells but was eventually convinced about the efficacy and impact of oil on the Kingdom. The rest is history.

The question can be asked, based on our present-day knowledge of tenuous Guyana/Venezuela border relations, why a Guyanese working in the oilfields of Venezuela would be calling for a search for oil in British Guiana at that time. The reason is simple. The Venezuela-Guyana border controversy was not yet re-opened. The boundary between the two countries was considered a ”full, perfect and final settlement” by an international Court of Arbitration in 1899 but became an issue of contention about 1949, following the publication of a posthumous memorandum (written in 1944) of dissent with the original settlement by an American lawyer Severo Mallett-Prevost. Mallet-Prevost was the lawyer representing the interest of Venezuela during the 1899 arbitration.

The debate in the British Guiana press in 1930 presaged some of the contemporary discussions on the advantages of oil discovery for Guyana.

In 1919 the Colonial Office (British) granted to Elliot Alves, the chairman of the Venezuelan Oil concession, the rights to found an oil industry in Guyana. Michael Swan, in British Guiana: The Land of Six Peoples, referenced the early conjecture in Guyana that oil might be found in the North West district. In 194041 a company called Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd made a survey for oil in the area between Demerara and Corentyne but with no success. Swan concluded that it was “unlikely that oil will be found in the colony because the greater portion of British Guiana is composed of rock which was formed by extremely high temperatures so that any original organic materials held in these rocks would have been destroyed.”

But the search did not end there. In the 1950s there was a flurry of requests to search for and drill for oil, mostly in coastal Guyana.

The British White Paper of 1953 suggested that Gulf Oil Corporation “withdrew their application for an exploration licence” while Panhandle Oil Canada Limited had abandoned “further exploration pending the clarification of the political situation.” The political situation of course was a reference to the election of the PPP government in the same year and the resulting political upheaval over the suspension of the Constitution by the British government.

The McBride Oil & Gas (Texas Company) sought and received a concession to explore for oil along the coast and offshore in 1954.

In 1958 Standard Oil signed an agreement with Governor Sir Patrick Renison to permit offshore and coastal exploration of the colony.

Soviet special representatives came to British Guiana in 1962 amidst political turmoil and a raging global Cold War and reportedly found a “promising oil bearing area of about 40,000 square kilometres” of the country that was likely productive.

But all the foregoing efforts to locate oil were either unsuccessful or stalled.

In 1972 Guyana closed down the Georgetown to Rosignol railway because oil was plentiful and cheap globally. Approximately a year later came the 1973 oil embargo and the cost of oil shot upward causing a global crisis; now the decision to terminate the railway appeared imprudent. Subsequent woes in Guyana and other countries proved the correctness of actively distrusting even stable commo

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