OPINION: Oil spill law: empowers Exxon, endangers Guyanese

Last Updated on Monday, 19 May 2025, 22:38 by Writer

by GHK Lall

One of these days trust in politicians in this country will drop to absolute zero. Not a microgram for anyone of them. When I first heard that an oil spill bill was on the way, I said there would be something, some provision, in it that protects Guyanese. At least, there would be a bill, guaranteed to be law, given the PPP Government’s one-seat edge, that had some resemblance to what a true oil spill law should look like. It didn’t; not even as an apology for an oil spill law.

My expectation was conditioned on two prongs: there were two government generals leading the parliamentary charge with it. The first Generalo can’t fall so low, have anything to do with what’s been called ‘hoax’, ‘fix’, ‘sham’. I call it all three, using more colorful language. And the other general, would have fought some rearguard battle inside the PPP and succeeded against insurmountable odds to insert a clause or two that delivers an oil spill cushion for vulnerable Guyanese. Despite their lengthy political pedigree — perhaps, because of it — both generals abandoned doing their duty for the Guyanese people and left them at the mercy of the oil spill gods. These two men counted, since the rest are mere extras.

Under the PPP Government, Guyanese have been shortchanged when more money for their oil is the subject. Under the PPP Government, the level of protection that would give comfort has been thrown overboard. Not a government leader standing up, fighting for it. Not even a reserve/contingency fund should the worst come to pass. Not the legal backing to reach past ExxonMobil Guyana and all the way up to ExxonMobil, USA. This is not politics, nor what is geostrategic. This is what doing business, protecting one’s own, in the right way is all about. The PPP as an entity, government or opposition, is nothing but a regular double-crosser. When it was in the opposition, the PPP hated the Burnham Constitution. Now that it is government, there is nothing that the party loves more, notwithstanding its warts and deficits. When the new generation of PPP players were in the opposition ranks, they spoke of how much they detested the 2016 Exxon oil contract. When they came into government, there is nobody who cherishes that raw deal more. They coddle it and now are inseparable from it, no matter that it leaves Guyanese high and dry.

Who has been more against what Justice Sandil Kissoon provided as an opening for in his bold ruling, but the PPP? Not even a matter as potentially devastating as a consequential oil spill of consequence on Guyana could get the gang that calls itself the PPP, to make an exception and stand for Guyanese. It went one step better. The PPP Government got a law to legitimize protecting Exxon from much of anything, from getting its hands sullied to coming out of pocket, should a catastrophic oil spill erupt offshore. Exxon is racing ahead with upping its daily production numbers, with unknown risks taken, without the most robust measures in place or at hand, and the PPP still went ahead and put a crown on what the company is doing. It put a law on the books that protects Exxon’s interests more, and took what is to the detriment of Guyana, to a worse place. Oil companies like Exxon are quick learners, never succeed by staying static. They learned from BP and its experience in the Gulf of Louisiana/Mexico. BP has already shelled out US$65 billion in the last 16 years for the Deepwater Horizon blowout, with two or as much as three times that amount calculated to be pending in the next ten years. With a captive PPP Government in place, Exxon has Guyana going downhill sans parachute.

A year to file, and the parent company itself, ExxonMobil, is immunized from any oil spill liability. Guyana’s legal eagle was all soothing: the year only starts to count when injury or deficiency is discovered. Most Guyanese labor painfully over who to trust, who to vote for, and there is their legal eagle comforting them that a year isn’t really a year. It only begins when they come to their senses about the enormity of what happened to them, including that lesion, or that mysterious illness. When Guyanese put the PPP in power, they got an Exxon shell company for protection, and a shell government standing for them. Instead of the best elected representatives, they got the worst elected rebels. I thought long and hard about elected reprobates but remembered that a holiday is pending. So, I liberated them with elected rebels. These are the same fine fellows, who during prior parliamentary histrionics over oil spills spoke of ‘quantifying the unquantifiable’; and the ‘highly unlikely.’ They would have used ‘Black Swan’ events, except that that is above their IQ scores. This is where vulnerable and imperiled Guyana is beached. Let’s hope there is no spill and that such doesn’t reach nearby beaches. This is what Guyanese are reduced to: crossing their fingers in lieu of robust parent company coverage/guarantee.