THE Mayor and City Council (M&CC) and university students in Guyana are expected to benefit from Oil and Gas [O&G]-related opportunities, through the visit of the Mayor/Provost of Aberdeen, this March.

This was announced by British High Commissioner to Guyana, Gregory Quinn, on Thursday, in the presence of a United Kingdom (UK) O&G delegation of 13 companies on a visit to form relationships with local businesses.

Quinn told the media, that the visit of the Aberdeen Provost Barney Crockett, will not only benefit the local City Council with the sharing of expertise, but can result in arrangements for educational opportunities.

The City of Aberdeen, located in Scotland, has long been boasted as the ‘oil capital of Europe’ and has racked-up years of experience in the oil industry dating back to the mid-20th century.

“We’ve made lots of missteps; we know what works; we know what the problems are, so there’s an experience that we can pass on and a skill set which we can pass on,” Quinn said.

He added: “What we are keen on, is getting the Lord Mayor of Aberdeen to both make links here with Georgetown on a city to city basis, and also to look at the educational opportunities that exist between universities which are based in Aberdeen and the universities here.”

The Aberdeen Provost is expected to visit for about four days and a programme to host him is in the process of being formulated, the diplomat noted.

It will include both representatives from the city council; government ministries and agencies; the private sector and the education sector.

The [representatives] in the mentioned groups will have the opportunity to learn from Aberdeen; of pitfalls to watch out for when the revenue begins flowing and, of ways the two cities can forge future collaborations.

“It’s always best, rather than to have people like me tell the City Council how to do this, is that you bring over someone from a similar City Council who has lived it, breathed it, worked on it for 30 or 40 years, and who can pass on his own experience as well as those of his colleagues there,” he explained.

Meanwhile, the UK O&G delegations which recently concluded their visit in the country, included entities such as: the Energy Industries Council (EIC); Department for International Trade; 80:20 Procurement; Airswift; Destec Engineering Ltd; EXHEAT; Fircroft; KOSO Kent Introl Limited; Petrofac; RST Global Solutions Holdings Ltd; SAS Environmental Services; Group SSE and ThinJack.

Prior to coming to Guyana, the team visited Trinidad and Tobago where they similarly sought to establish new business relationships and understand the dynamics of O&G in that country.

“The whole point is to build the relationship, and also to allow these companies to make links and joint ventures in relation to local companies, so that everybody can help prepare for the coming oil and gas boom that is here,” Quinn said.

Meanwhile, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Senior Vice-President Nicholas Boyer, said that the Chamber had met with the Energy Industries Council while in Aberdeen last year and, having sold Guyana as a country full of opportunities; together they pulled the UK trade mission.

A team of nine local companies, along with representatives of the Foreign Affairs Ministry; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the University of Guyana (UG) had taken the trip in November, 2018.

Summarising the benefits that can unfold, Boyer said: “As Guyanese, we all should be very cognisant that as long as we work together in the national interest, what is coming for us is an opportunity that would have maybe escaped our forefathers but will be arriving at our generation, and I think that we really need to focus on maximising the opportunity that comes out of that, and leveraging it to really build a Guyana that is amazing and an incredible leader within the Caribbean and Latin America.”

Boyer believes that Guyana has too many examples around it of what can go wrong, to miss the opportunity to get things right.

However, he reminded that for Guyana’s economy to become a leading one in Latin American and the Caribbean, it will take all forms of unification.

“I think Guyana can be a destination that is unbelievable, but what has to happen is that the policy makers; the private sector and civil society and others, as a whole, have to really start to sit down and put their energies together because the solutions that are needed cannot be approached by any one piece of this puzzle.

“Government alone doesn’t have all the solutions; private sector alone can’t push all the development and civil society alone can’t hold all of us accountable to a transparent industry. But when you put all the groupings together, imagine what can come out of it,” Boyer said.