Guyana is often mentioned for less than stellar reasons. There’s Jonestown (‘(s)he drank the Kool Aid’), rigged elections, the poorest country after Haiti in CARICOM and Latin America, the costliest failed infrastructural project in CARICOM (US$250M Skeldon sugar factory), and failed or captured regulatory agencies. Standouts among the latter was the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM)…
What do we value as the oil and gas juggernaut rolls on? On your way to or from Guyana’s international airport at Timehri you travel on the East Bank Demerara road. Every mile or so, a small billboard displaying the village name will flash past your eyes. 29 kms from Georgetown and 10.5 km from…
Imagine if you drive your car to an Esso gas station and fill your tank with US$27.20 in gas. Then you decide to pay the cashier only US$20 for your gas and you walk out. The police would soon track you down for robbing the franchise owner of that Esso location. Hence, it is puzzling…
Guyana now has an oil purse of US$436 million dollars in a foreign bank that mysteriously sits untapped in a period of our greatest need. We are in the midst of a deadly pandemic; one the world hasn’t experienced since the Spanish Flu of 1918 that took an estimated 20 to 50 million lives. We…
The Environmental Assessment Board (EAB) is appointed by the Natural Resources Minister and comprises three persons. No qualifications or experience are listed in the Environmental Protection (EP) Act for EAB members. The EAB Commissioners for the 2021 calendar year are Mr Omkar Lochan (Chair, third year of service on the EAB), Ms Pradeepa Bholanauth, who…
By Stabroek News September 21, 2022 Dear Editor, In a SN article dated 8/15/2022 and captioned, ‘Guyana set to receive 12 lifts of profit oil for 2022 – Ministry’, it is reported ‘…that the expected total production of oil in 2022 is 93.6 million barrels of oil… (from which) …Guyana will get an estimated 12…
Could the Ministry of Natural Resources explain where the ‘guaranteed minimum of 50 mmscfd of associated gas’ (Ministry of Natural Resources public notice 25 August 2021) will come from if ExxonMobil has only 4 per cent to spare of the 75 mmscfd of gas after the FPSOs Liza Destiny and Liza Unity and Liza Prosperity are…
Vice President Jagdeo recently added some clarity regarding the long-term vision of the PPP/C administration. This clarification came at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas. The first vision pertains to the immediate maximising of oil revenues because of the uncertain prospects for fossil fuel in the coming three decades. The second vision has to…
I was outraged when I read the Department of Public Information (DPI) release that the “Gas-to-Energy project, when constructed and operationalised will significantly reduce the emission of harmful gases into the atmosphere, thereby improving Guyana’s status as a good environmental steward.” As a former Chemistry teacher of long standing I cannot remain silent in the…
In response to questions from journalist Neil Marks on News Room’s Insider, Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo said the fact that a person does not know about the feasibility studies does not mean that they do not exist. My response is, “Well, sir, please show them to us. And by this we mean a proper feasibility study…
