Men of straw

I first heard Trinidad’s great calypsonian, the Mighty Chalkdust belt out his satirical classic “Three Blind Mice” from our ancient, hoarse radiogram. Sharply attired in a scarlet ranch-styled embroidered vest, the stern, hard-staring “Chalkie” is shown on the cover of the long-playing vinyl record sporting a silver firearm and preparing to shoot straight, given the winning title song “Ah put on me guns again.”

Referring to a party convention of the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) in which the country’s famously irascible Prime Minister Eric Williams supposedly slammed his equally strong-headed counterparts in Guyana, Jamaica and Barbados for backing out of a proposed joint smelter project, Chalkdust asked through his close friend, Ivan Williams, a party founding member, “Doctor, can you tell me why Jamaica vex with we?”

Williams’ immortal response to his namesake, as conveyed by the calypsonian in a deadly shot was: “Tell (Jamaica’s Michael) Manley and (Guyana’s Forbes) Burnham ah got oil, let (Barbados’ Errol) Barrow kiss me tail, oil don’t spoil…don’t you know Manley, Burnham, Barrow, they running bout only setting strife, cutting meh tail with Venezuela’s knife, did you ever see such jackasses in your life, as dem three blind mice?”

Given the 1973 international petroleum crisis that left Trinidad and Tobago (TT) awash in money, and the rest of the oil-dependent Caribbean countries trapped in a devastating economic downturn across the region, leader Williams promised in the stinging composition, “They will beg me again for what I have, but this time I am going to make them starve, to get my dollars they best think twice, dem three blind mice,” declaring, “Let Burnham keep he rice, ah have got oil, they will have to pay my price, oil don’t spoil, but is my own throat they trying to slice…”

The piece ended with Manley retorting the “three blind mice” were really the PM’s deputies, Kamaluddin Mohammed, George Chambers and Errol Mahabir, described as “spineless men of straw.” The plan to launch an aluminium industry in TT dated back to the 1960s, with experts urging closer economic integration through smarter production and trade. They supported combining the bauxite resources of Jamaica and Guyana powered by the twin-islands’ energy to establish a smelter. PM Williams agreed with the pair of fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) founding-states to construct it in 1973, with the five-year project to be jointly owned. But the dream proved short-lived and as elusive as true regional unity, with conflict between TT and Jamaica over the role of powers outside of the Commonwealth Caribbean such as Venezuela, causing the scheme to be abandoned.

The acclaimed title song and another from the august album, “No Smut For Me” would earn the perennially popular “Chalkie,” whose real name is Hollis Liverpool, his first Calypso Monarch crown in 1976. A respected teacher, historian and commentator, he would go on to record more than 300 calypsos and take eight Monarch titles, the most recent in 2017. Graduating from the University of the West Indies, with a bachelor’s degree in history and sociology, the Mighty Chalkdust also earned a master’s in African history, and a doctorate in history and ethnomusicology.

Now the mighty tables of history and industry have turned, with TT oil production on the decline, its lossmaking State refinery abruptly shuttered, and impoverished, unprepared Guyana suddenly looking at dazzling decades of unexpected riches that are likely to exceed its stunned neighbours. In May 2015, the powerful ExxonMobil (XOM)-led consortium announced its first “significant” find after a decades-long search with the Liza-1 well in the lucrative and huge 6.6-million-acre Stabroek Block yielding high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs, about 120 miles offshore.

Since then, the discoveries keep coming. Just this year, XOM announced its 11th and 12th major oil and gas finds in the south-eastern section, Tilapia-1 and Haimara-1 bearing the common names of local fishes, and taking its Guyana estimated recoverable resources to more than 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent. With the country’s first oil well expected up with 120,000 barrels per day by early next year, and at least another dozen or so likely, some analysts predict production could exceed a million (M) barrels daily over the coming decade, rocketing this country from a nobody to a newfound star shining in non-OPEC’s (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) top ten. A mere two of XOM’s wildcat wells have missed, representing a phenomenal success rate of over 80 percent.

Just this week the Mighty Chalkdust celebrated his 78th birthday. These days Guyanese still remember the “oil don’t spoil” riposte, with the stinging crack often being quoted in letters to the daily newspapers as a direct attribution to Prime Minister Williams.

Yet Guyana’s previous President Donald Ramotar and his Natural Resources Minister, Robert Persaud want us to believe that ancient oil, tens of millions of years old, does spoil, given their hasty award of prized blocks near XOM’s lucrative Stabroek Block, days before the crucial May 2015 general election that saw them, and the People’s Progressive Party/Civic finally lose a 23 year-grip on power.

Stabroek News reported Ramotar’s denial of questionable conduct, follows public calls from this government’s former official Petroleum Adviser, Dr. Jan Mangal for an overdue investigation by the still-ruling