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FM
Former Member

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...tion-for-guyana.html

Guyana fishermen make their way home to the coastal community of Clonbrook at the end of another day at sea. Guyana is one of the poorest countries in South America, but massive offshore oil reserves may well transform it to one of the wealthiest in the next few years.CreditChristopher Gregory for The New York Times

 
 

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — Guyana is a vast, watery wilderness with only three paved highways. There are a few dirt roads between villages that sit on stilts along rivers snaking through the rain forest. Children in remote areas go to school in dugout canoes, and play naked in the muggy heat.

Hugging the coast are musty clapboard towns like Georgetown, the capital, which seems forgotten by time, honeycombed with canals first built by Dutch settlers and African slaves. The power grid is so unreliable that blackouts are a regular plague in the cities, while in much of the countryside there is no electricity at all.

Such is the unlikely setting for the world’s next big oil boom.

In the last three years, ExxonMobil has drilled eight gushing discovery wells offshore. With the potential to generate nearly $20 billion in oil revenue annually by the end of the next decade, roughly equivalent to the revenues of the much-larger Colombia, there could be enough bounty to lift the lives of almost every Guyanese.

If all goes well, one of the poorest countries in South America could become one of the wealthiest. Suddenly the talk of Georgetown is a proposed sovereign wealth fund to manage all the money, as if this were a Persian Gulf sheikhdom.

But there are obstacles. If history is any guide, countries that discover oil often waste their opportunity, as the resource blends seamlessly with corruption. Countries with weak political institutions like Guyana are especially vulnerable.

“You have an alignment of money and power in the hands of the state, so the party in power controls the resources,” said Floyd Haynes, a Guyanese-born finance professor who is a consultant to Business Ministry. “And the money is usually squandered, misapplied or downright stolen.’’

 

Senior government officials here have little experience regulating a big oil industry or negotiating with international companies. The civil service is corrupt, and the private sector is slow to innovate, businessmen and aides to senior officials acknowledge.

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It’s a negative view and, yes there is the risk. However, Guyana engaging nations like Norway, etc gives hope.  Furthermore, with Guyanese talking openly about these risk makes it likely less to happen.  

And don’t forget, there is BJ with a hawk eye 👁 trained pon dem rass!

FM
Bibi Haniffa posted:
Mitwah posted:

At 55, he is a bit slow. I was his in his hood last week.   Nice and clean. 

Tell him what it feels like to be 66.

How come you look so much younger than your sister?

Mitwah

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