By GHK Lall- Exxon’s Guyana Head, Mr. Alistair Routledge, created a firestorm in Guyana with an unyielding expression of his company’s position. Though he said much, he was careful to steer clear of certain circumstances, disciplined to silence. What Mr. Routledge didn’t say, I say.
Exxon is here to make a profit. All else is charity. A bat, a hat, a sponsorship, a relationship, those are all charity. But with a difference. Exxon takes Guyana’s oil money and doles out tiny dollops of charity to passive, pauperized Guyanese. Profits and set asides for charity embody how free enterprise works. Not Samuelson nor Stiglitz, but real life with real people.
Second, Mr. Routledge wasn’t crass; he didn’t state the obvious. Exxon’s first duty is to its own constituency. Investors, Managers. Other workers. All its stakeholders. They vote for Exxon’s slate of directors, the team at senior levels. They are owed. Visions that reward. Returns that are tangible, measurable.
Third, with those two in mind, all else are byproducts, secondary; some higher, some immaterial to Exxon’s plans for prospering to the max from Guyana’s wealth. It is capitalism at its best (and its worst, from the victims’ standpoint). This is what the Exxon Guyana hand was wise enough to skirt around, put as much distance as he could in his Guyana Proviso 2026. Exxon is about Exxon. Whatever is beyond that belongs elsewhere.
Fourth, a repetition now follows. If Guyanese really want more from their patrimony, they will have to battle. Not by going head-on in opposition to Exxon; that’s a losing effort. There’s America, and its armada that can be summoned to set right a quarrelsome special relationship. Guyana’s battling has to be more nuanced. Though the PPP Govt seeks to deny this, it has to be a better guerilla fighter, more of a stealth operator. There’s Guyana’s EPA. Lots of visions and operations pass under that sensitive roof.
Sanctity of contract is still honored (it must be). But Guyana must have its own timing. How long it desires to receive its rightful share of profits. How much it wishes to avoid a burdening cost bank. A war could be fought on different front, using different tactics. The PPP Govt has done so successfully with unions. The PPP Govt has won handy victories in elections, through fixing the territory to suit its interests, influencing outcomes. Whither that identical PPP resourcefulness, PPP craftiness, PPP readiness to project the same with oil and the American leviathan, Exxon?
Fifth, Exxon has also been very skilled in piloting its own interests in other ways. What is withheld. Audits suspended between time and space. Apologies to Alistair Routledge, but where Guyanese interests are being lynched. What Mr. Routledge didn’t say was that Guyana’s leaders across the divide have to show some male testicles and some of that vital female endurance (think labor pains) to get Guyana to where it should be, and the Guyanese people to some different plain. Preferably, a higher one.
Sixth, Mr. Routledge didn’t say it, but almost all Guyanese know it, the PPP as a party, and the other political parties exist with one vision prioritized: how to retain power or get into power. He didn’t say that Exxon can and has tapped into and prospers from that ambition. He didn’t have to say that Exxon can play them against each other, seek the one group that wouldn’t touch the company’s wealth gathering, and has succeeded handsomely in doing both.
Seventh, since Mr. Rouledge used the royal “we” in his Declaration of Georgetown, I use it, too. We are here to make money. Guyanese leaders, the Guyanese people, have their own duty. To decide on Guyana’s destiny. When some grasp for power, some for money, others for liberty, there is how building this nation stands currently. What Alistair Routledge was too polite to lay on the table (is to Exxon’s benefit), I did. (Coming up: Firing the soul of the nation).
