PRIME Minister Moses Nagamootoo has reaffirmed that Guyana is blessed with both “sweet oil and fertile soil”, and that the first 10 years after first oil would be the “bonanza decade”.
Writing in his popular Sunday Chronicle column, My Turn, the prime minister disclosed that, depending on what the economists would describe as volatility in oil prices, Guyana’s stake in revenues could start from US$300 million annually, and peak at over US$5 billion by the end of the decade.

“Revenues from oil will facilitate unprecedented, dream-like development. It is this decade that would be defining for Guyana, if we complement oil with the soil; fuel with food,” he asserted.

The long-standing senior government functionary sees soil cultivation as a major down stream of oil production. “It is common sense that with revenues from oil being pumped into agriculture, agro-processing, fishery and inland aquaculture, cattle and other large-scale livestock business, our wealth will never run dry.”

He urged our business sector, which is concerned about “local content,” to prepare for opportunities in the massive downstream public investment programmes. Long in advance of first oil, local investors should develop the necessary institutional capacity to manage big local projects alone or as joint-development partners.
“Our business sector can enjoy the bountiful promise that lies ahead,” the prime minister said.

Reacting to cynicisms from so-called resource nationalists, the prime minister said that these persons downplay the potential benefits Guyana could get from its oil reserves, and they invariably daub as crooked the big foreign companies that could possibly help make Guyana the richest country in the world.

“I followed with growing pain the nihilistic notion that we could leave our oil in the soil, and somehow still take our people out from poverty; and that ExxonMobil could walk, if we up demands for a hike in royalty and profit oil,” Mr Nagamootoo said.

“I don’t doubt that oil has risks, many risks. But it is coming at this time as our saviour, not as our curse,” the prime minister declared in his column.
So far, he said that he has been reluctant to write about our budding oil industry, save for references to the estimated six billion barrels of proven reserves from some 13 offshore wells.

He said that while it may be true that “oil don’t spoil,” as a former Trinidad prime minister has declared, oil wealth could be drained away on consumption and importation of food and other consumer essentials that could be produced here.

He lauded President David Granger whom, he said, was plugging for food security and self-sufficiency. “He has struck the right balance when he declared that in the first decade of oil, there will be agricultural diversification and industrialisation,” and that Guyana could become the bread basket of the Eastern Caribbean.

He is optimistic that the APNU+AFC coalition government is holding a viable vision for the Decade of Development under its Green State Development Strategy. That vision, in simple language, is: Oil plus Soil is equal to Fuel Plus Food.