Guyana Energy Conference and Expo has come to a close after four days of talk. However, the real work in Guyana’s nascent Oil and Gas Sector is only just getting started. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Ghanaian President and Mia Mottley the Barbadian Prime Minister both recorded in their presentations to the Energy forum that the people are the main stakeholders in the journey ahead.
In moving oration Addo said the people must not be “left impoverished and dissatisfied” and Mottley stated stirringly that, “You cannot move from being a highly indebted poor country to where you are today without being given the opportunity to bring along your people who have suffered the indignity of that poverty for decades.”
Even more recently, UWI’s Dr. Lorraine Sobers who has 18 years’ experience in the energy sector and is a Reservoir Engineer and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine stated who is at the heart of Guyana developmental issues: “Good Governance”. Dr. Sobers who is also the Project Coordinator for CO2 Emission Reduction Mobilisation Project and a Junior Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium.
In a recent publication for News Americas, “Good Governance, The Best Play For Guyana“, Dr. Sobers is is of the studied view that, “Guyana can be a legendary player in the Latin America and Caribbean region only if it relies on Good Governance, not just abundant cash and oil resources, to achieve progress and prosperity for all.”
“The status of Guyana’s good governance is the backdrop for evaluating the risk of investing in Guyana. The higher the risk, the weaker the bargaining position. There is good news and bad news about Guyana’s governance stats compiled by the World Bank. Guyana scores between 5 and 20 percentage points below the average for Latin American and Caribbean in all indicators for good governance. The indicators are Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption.”
“The good news is that there have been overall improvements, albeit with fluctuations, in most indices. Regulatory Quality was on a decreasing trend, but this rebounded slightly between 2019 and 2020. The Government Effectiveness percentile rank fluctuated but did not improve overall between 2015 and 2020. Control of corruption was on an increasing trend but this declined marginally between 2019 and 2020. Guyana’s technical team has the responsibility of improving these rankings to secure its grasp on “One Guyana”,” Dr. Sobers stated.
There are several outstanding critical issues with Guyana’s current arrangement with ExxonMobil: Ring Fencing, Liability Insurance, Percentage Royalty, and Percentage after cost recovery, among others. Several constitutional Commissions are yet to be appointed, including the Petroleum Commission and the Natural Resources Fund is yet to be fully operationalized, even with the ramming through the National Assembly of its Act, by the same name; the board and several important committees are yet to be constituted, but the oil revenues it provides stewardship for are already being spent without sufficient oversight.
If the continued eroding of Guyana’s guardrails persists, ‘Good Governance’ will remain nothing but a ‘fleeting elusion’ and PM Mia Mottley timely words will become a people’s lived experience, becoming ‘tenants in their own land’.
More, In The Ring.
