An oil industry… going forward
As a nation, we are approaching the point of possibly becoming a major producer of oil and gas producer, though just how big a player we will be can only be determined with the passage of time in circumstances where our understanding of the industry, its dynamics and its complexities is worryingly limited.
This much has manifested itself and the fanciful ‘rags to riches’ perception that had developed across much of the country during the years when we were ‘wishing and hoping’ for an oil discovery, which had more or less caused us to blind our eyes to the broader permutations of being a part of the sector.
The period between the (May 2015) announcement of an oil find and the anticipated time line for exploitation and recovery is perhaps much shorter than one might have thought (not too many years ago the time line between discovery and recovery would have been at least a decade) so that the Government of Guyana currently finds itself focused on entering the various agreements (including those with ExxonMobil) that have to do with exploitation. In other words we have had to ‘hit the ground running,’ so to speak.
At the level of government, there have also been efforts to enhance the national oil and gas knowledge base. The President/Government has recruited an advisor on the sector and there have been discourses with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago which we are told will eventually metamorphose into an agreement that will result in technical help from the twinisland, oil-producing, Caricom sister country.
Local public education on oil and gas has been confined mostly to the media spinoff that has derived from the various oil and gas fora organized mainly by government though the apparent level of public involvement suggests that anything even remotely resembling an understanding of the dynamics of oil and gas and the various ways in which it will affect local communities, the environment and the economy is confined, largely, to a minority of people who, for one reason or another, have an active interest.
One of the most interesting environmentrelated issues has to do with squaring the circle between maximizing the economic opportunities afforded by oil and gas and remaining mindful of the importance of maintaining an environmental balance.
By now we know more than enough about the environmental downside of a mishandled oil and gas industry to say nothing about the persistent ‘green economy’ reminders being issued by President Granger. It has to be said that those reminders may yet serve to ‘keep us hon-