Opinion
Oil, Government Take & Spending: Navigating Guyana’s Development Challenges # 27
Introduction and Definition Today’s column develops further the discussion of the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code. I had proposed Guyana’s unqualified adoption of this Code, as the most effective means for forging a seamless integration of spending the expected Government Take from the petroleum sector and the national fiscal and budgetary systems. The column elaborates on…
We need leaders who are versed in logistics and economics of oil
Would you sell your most valuable resource for about 25% of the price of what it was worth? That is what Canada was doing in November when they allowed the oil companies to sell Alberta crude oil for US$13 a barrel when the market price was US$54. This landlocked oil was costing the government millions…
Oil, Government Take & Spending: Navigating Guyana’s Development Challenges # 26
Introduction Today’s column continues the discussion of the tenth (and final) item on my list of “top-10 development challenges”, which as I have indicated, Guyana will face when spending Government Take from its coming petroleum sector. Last week’s column had offered two concrete proposals on the topic (“integrating PSA revenues and the National Budget”). Both…
Malcolm X projected as a Guyanese: Speaks on Race, Voting and Oil Resources
The history of Guyana and progress of Guyana have been weighed down, bugged down, and riveted down by racism. We must accept our racial differences, without being discriminatory, while continuously trying to burnish and enrich our differences in allowing for integration of citizens into the social, political, economic, civic and cultural attributes of our Guyaneseism,…
Ambassador Holloway’s Mathematical Misstep: Unraveling the Numbers
Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 67) Introduction “You couldn’t do the math”, said Ambassador Perry Holloway in his interview with reporters published in Stabroek News last Tuesday December 9, 2018 as he exhorted us Guyanese to educate ourselves about the fortune coming our way from ExxonMobil’s oil. Let us allow the…
Oil, Government Take & Spending: Navigating Guyana’s Development Challenges – 25
Introduction In last week’s column, I had indicated that there were two proposals, which I wished to offer on the tenth topic on my list of “top-10 development challenges.” That topic is “Integrating PSA Revenues into the National Budget.” These proposals are: First, a call for a major framework policy indicative plan early on in…
The Loan Conundrum: Questions Surrounding Oil and Gas Governance Funding
Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 66) Introduction Mr. David Patterson, Minister of Public Infrastructure, offered a commendably prompt but strange response to last week’s column by way of his December 8 letter to the editor “The 2019 budgetary allocation has nothing to do with natural gas”. Strange because Mr. Patterson appears to…
Oil, Government Take & Spending: Navigating Guyana’s Development Challenges – 24
Introduction Today’s column starts consideration of the final topic (number 10) on my list of the top 10 development challenges, which I anticipate that spending Government’s Take from its coming petroleum sector, scheduled to be on-stream in early 2020, will have to confront in the coming years. That topic is Integrating the Production Sharing Agreement…
Mapping the Gas Bubble: Patterson’s Folly
Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-Minded (Part 65) Introduction Today’s column carries out a commitment I made in a letter earlier this week responding to a statement by Mr. David Patterson, Minister of Public Infrastructure appearing in the last Sunday Stabroek. Patterson reports that a Dutch company will be undertaking an ocean floor…
Mr. G.K. Lall is telling us to be happily enslaved by this contract
What’s the difference between a traitor and an educated writer, with the writer using his pen to weaken and impoverish his people, under the guise of security and national interest, to justify an oil contract so stupid and filled with incomprehensible nonsense and incomparable exploiting terms? We have quislings among us, whose touchstone is not…