PM Ralph Gonsalves to Guyanese… Oil can be a blessing or curse

WHETHER OIL TURNS OUT TO BE A BLESSING OR A CURSE depends on a government’s policies said Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines during his address at the opening ceremony of Guyana’s second annual International Energy Conference and Expo held at the Guyana Marriott Hotel, Kingston in the capital under the theme ‘Harnessing Energy for Development’.

“The market is important for the production of goods and services. But the market has shown itself historically, and in the contemporary sense, inadequate, to address critical issues such as redistributive justice, and environmental sustainability,” Gonsalves said.

PM Gonsalves who holds a Ph.D. in government from the University of Manchester, and two honorary doctorates from the Bolivarian University of Venezuela and the University of Wales Trinity St David, observed that “oil in some countries has been a blessing and in some, a curse, and the avoidance of it being a curse, the market has to recognise the legitimate role of the state in addressing redistributive justice and regulating matters for environmental sustainability.”

The Caribbean is very important to Guyana’s development, Gonsalves said, noting that Georgetown, like Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, “look inwards.”  However, for him, the key to sustainable regional development is looking outward to help resolve its issues.

“The Region is vital for Guyana. Guyana though it has large continental land mass, it is in profound ways, a seaboard civilisation. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, we are part of what you may call island civilization. The seaboard civilisations, like the island civilization, are peculiar civilizations, and given the nature of a seaboard or an island civilisation, when we are in them, we tend to look inwards. But, at the same time, accompanying that inward look there must be necessarily an outward gaze, and dialects between the inward look and the outward gaze is important to resolve. And it can only be resolved if you go to your neighbours in the Region, whether it is in the Caribbean that is an important connection or Latin America” he counselled.

The Government of Guyana plans to accelerate the production of its oil and gas, but these activities have the potential to hurt some Caribbean islands if there is an oil spill.  ExxonMobil has said in its environmental impact assessments (EIAs) that an oil spill at one of its Stabroek Block projects can impact Caribbean islands, especially Trinidad and Tobago.

Guyana is still to acquire a parent company guarantee from ExxonMobil, the largest shareholder of the Stabroek Block. Currently, approximately 360,000 barrels of oil per day are being produced at the Liza One and Two fields. A third project,

The third project, Payara, is expected to start this year.

The oil company has already received approval for the fourth development, the Yellowtail. In the meantime, the fifth and sixth projects are pending approval by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

And, the EPA is in talks with ExxonMobil for a US$2B coverage. Industry stakeholders have said that this is tantamount to a drop in the bucket, considering that oil spill cleanup costs in some territories have been in the range of US$65B.