‘Everybody was shooting in the dark’

our neighbour. Nobody wanted to go near that water, even if it was as far as where they are in the Demerara,” he said. “I don’t want to say whether we are robbed or not. I will say this, though, now that it has been derisked, were we to accept a similar deal with any new contract negotiation, 2% can’t cut it. 2% can never cut it,” he added.

Jordan said that what should be noted are the technicalities that come with each offshore exploration and that it is not as clear cut as the critics would want the public to believe. “Each one of these oil explorations is a different animal. How many companies are doing deep water in a challenged area? How many? So, sometimes, when you see what is being touted in the newspaper, you tell yourself hindsight is 20/20 and have to ask if these people [the critics] are for real… The field is always greener from the other side and you are not seeing it all the time,” he stressed.

Jordan said that throughout history every government faces similar situations where what they believed could have worked when they were in opposition proved otherwise when they got into office. “I remember deceased President Cheddi Jagan saying all kinds of things in 1992, including that we had a dictatorship constitution. And when he came to power in 1992 and they asked him—‘When are you going to change the constitution?’—he said, ‘Well, you know, when you look at it closely, it not that bad. It is really the person.’ So people say all kinds of things when they are not in power to get into power. And when they get in there they find they can’t do what they had been saying when they were in opposition or when they were outside. Our country is replete [with] talkers but when they get into power, they become accommodators…,” he added.