Guyana Is About to Open Up Pandora’s Barrel – Expats hold the key to whether its big offshore oil deposits bring riches — or ruin.

Wedged between Brazil and Venezuela, Guyana could easily go unnoticed. It has fewer than 750,000 people and a per capita income of $4,300, half the regional average, qualifying it as the hemisphere’s third-poorest nation.  At the moment, Guyana also might be its luckiest. Having struck big oil offshore starting in 2015, industry experts reckon total reserves at around 2 billion…

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Diaspora seen as pivotal to Guyana’s oil future

Whether Guyana becomes “immensely rich or just another Trump-hole” from oil revenues depends largely on its ability to attract specialty experience and competencies in industry and sectors here, says business website Bloomberg. “Guyana could attenuate the brain drain by reaching out to its diaspora,” Bloomberg yesterday reported. “There are more than 100 reported expatriate organizations,…

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Correct ExxonMobil contract …or it will be an uphill struggle to get other companies to do better

Chartered Accountant Nigel Hinds is pleading, once again, with the Government of Guyana and ExxonMobil to negotiate the “lopsided” Petroleum Sharing Contract (PSA) that they signed in 2016. Hinds said that along with the many ills of the contract, the APNU+AFC government needs to realise that if it does not fix the contract, other companies…

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Could Guyana escape the natural resource curse? Part 4 – Some Dutch disease scenarios

In the previous column we explored the possibility of Guyana becoming a petro state overnight. A petro state is one in which most government revenue comes from oil royalties and profit share. The government is then tasked with spending and distributing these funds among competing interests. The last column was sceptical about the Guyanese state’s…

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Agriculture, renewable energy, not oil are keys for Guyana’s long-term sustainability

Although Guyana is expected to become an oil producer, energy expert Dr. Vincent Adams says agriculture and renewable energy will actually be its keys to long-term sustainability. Adams told Sunday Stabroek that this will be what he will be telling not only government but Guyana’s citizenry when he returns this year, after serving in several…

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