Oil, sugar catalysts for shifting focus of Guyana, India relations
There are unmistakable indications that the more than half a century of relatively staid relations between Guyana and India are seemingly set to shift gears, with conventional diplomatic ties associated mostly with their membership of the Commonwealth now, apparently, metamorphosing into a more pragmatic relationship born out of mutual recognition that, in practical terms, each of them possess resources that are important to the other. With India it is oil. Not that the country does not possess considerable oil resources of its own. When, however, a country is ranked as the third largest consumer of oil, globally, and given the multi-faceted complexity of the contemporary oil and gas industry, enough is really never enough.
What oil has done for India/Guyana relations is to shift its axis from the staid pattern of diplomacy that has historically, been commonplace among member countries of the Commonwealth ‘club,’ to an agenda that is much more consistent with a more hard-nosed development agenda. For India, unmistakably, the ‘carrot’ is oil, its unmistakable public expression of interest going back to 2021 when it swept up the first ever consignment of ‘Liza light, sweet crude’ and afterwards never really stopped to ‘tie up’ a longer term oil supply deal with Guyana.
To India’s half a century plus of diplomatic relations with Guyana can be added much longer years of cultural ties which, it seems, has, in a profoundly practical way, now been thrown into the mix of the contemporary relationship.
New Delhi’s now seemingly closed oil deal with Guyana is not an ‘accomplishment’ that it would take lightly.