August 11 ,2021
We have moved on from the euphoria and lightheadedness of May, 2015, when the years of wishful thinking that had to do with our unreachable oil resources and the promise that those resources held for national transformation, were replaced by definitive proof that we were not, after all, simply a nation of dreamers.
Those dreams, after ExxonMobil’s disclosure of its first oil discovery, had become transformed. The overwhelming majority of us – for a period of time – neither knew nor cared ‘two hoots’ about the journey that still separated us from realizing the returns from our oil finds. We had felt, in some instances, as though the finding of oil alone was the completion of the journey.
There should have been some barrier to help separate euphoric celebration from hard reality, some intermediate curriculum that served to properly link the discovery of oil to the realization of the returns therefrom; some process that underscored the point that there was still a trek to be made between what ExxonMobil had said to us, on the one hand, and the potential returns that could derive therefrom, on the other.
That never really happened. In large measure, dreamers were left to wallow in wishful thinking, much of which left us traipsing light-headedly down roads strewn with idealism. Govern-ment, for the most part, never really sought to ‘rescue’ us from our excursions into fantasy.
In sum, what the fact of Guyana becoming an ‘oil-producing country’ has done most for Guyanese up to this point is to allow for the dreaming of dreams of an exalted existence without spelling out with anything remotely resembling clarity just how we are going to get there. An education process that lifts the darkness insofar as the path that takes us where we are told we are heading, has still not been forthcoming. We remain, in large measure, in a condition of strictly limited knowledge as to just what we, as a nation, can anticipate from our oil riches, save and except the dreams that those who rule are adept at fashioning and sprinkling like confetti amongst the unenlightened.
This has left us, for the most part, with a substantive ‘oil and gas agenda’ that has largely to do with the comings and goings of foreign investors, the local content prospects for our own private sector, the mostly vaguely defined transformational rhetoric coined by functionaries responsible for PR and, more recently, the two separate million barrel consignments of oil sold to India.
A bit more than that has happened. Over time, the ‘national discourse’ on matters to do with oil and gas, including the critical issue as to the ‘nuts and bolts’ of just how the resources garnered therefrom will be managed, has been pitched, unfortunately, at a level that excludes the majority of the populace from the essence of a crucial dialogue. Regrettably, the narrative on the issue of managing our oil resources appears to have been shaped by a bewilderingly narrow group of discussants. That is not where we ought to be.
This condition should not be taken to represent a lack of appreciation for a constituency of enlightened minds, small as that constituency appears to be. Frankly, there is need for such a constituency since it alone can serve, at this time, as a credible watchdog in circumstances where there is need for scrupulously overseeing the erection of adequate firewalls within which to protect against illicit infiltration of our collectables from the oil sector.
The bottom line here is that those possessed of a reliable body of knowledge on matters pertaining to the fidelity of the arrangements for ensuring the proper superintending of the returns accruing from the sale of oil are invaluable to the less enlightened at this time. Those ‘in the know,’ however, ought to be mindful that their contributions on the issue are not ‘pitched’ at a level that effectively inhibits a much broader, more effective national lobby which, by virtue of its numbers, can prove more effective in holding government’s feet to the fire in a matter that of the utmost national importance.
A case in point has to do with the recent confined public discourse over the merits or demerits of government’s leaning towards the Kazakhstan model for the Natural Resources Fund as against the option being employed by Norway. Here, the question surely arises as to whether there ought not to be some measure of public ventilation of what can be considered to be the most reliable/safest means of protecting our oil earnings from misuse and abuse or whether government should be left to its own devices in a matter of such overwhelming national importance.
It is not the nature of the current discourse on matters to do with how we manage our oil and gas resources that is at issue here. What the recent burst of discourse on the arrangements for managing oil monies does is to place government on notice that the matter of how our oil resources are managed is not devoid of some level of enlightened public insight and mindfulness. This is important, particularly in circumstances where there has long been a considerable public uncertainty regarding the level of official transparency in important aspects of the dissemination of information on the management of the oil and gas sector.
The real issue in question here is whether those who are at the helm of the management of the country’s oil resources do not have the responsibility to open up to a much wider constituency the discourse on matters to do with how those our oil resources are to be managed. After all and setting government’s obligation to the nation aside, questions have long been arising as to whether those who rule have not, to a considerable extent, been keeping the nation in the dark on matters to do with how the sector is being administered.
Now that the cracks are continually widening is it not high time that those who rule apply a much higher level of transparency to the manner in which they relate to the Guyanese people with regard to providing verifiable assurances about the arrangements that attend matters of accountability in the management of the country’s earnings from the oil and gas sector?
In circumstances where there is evidence of deficiency in government’s inclination to place some of the more sensitive matters pertaining to the oil sector in the public domain, it is left to those who have been scrupulously following the unfolding trail to bring these issues to light in a manner that allows the fullest possible national ventilation of the issues therein and participation in the decision-making.