IT is impossible to plan Guyana’s future in Oil & Gas outside a global context – not yesterday, not today, not ever — since every oil-producing country, whether a member of OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), is part of a worldwide energy movement.

In that sense, everything that affects the industry elsewhere has implications for Guyana, including the current situation in Europe regarding Russia and Ukraine.

Germany, last week, tactically suspended accreditation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, resulting in world oil prices sky-rocketing to near US $100 per barrel.

With its prices between five and seven times less than European or American competitors, Russia provides most of Europe’s crude oil and natural gas needs.

Germany’s Nord Stream 2 project is key to pumping more Russian oil supplies to the rest of Europe, likewise a similar pipeline from Russia through Ukraine.

But with oil as a commodity that also fuels wars, Washington targeted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline very early and threatened to kill it “If Russia invades Ukraine” – leading to the Germans opting instead for the earlier technical stop to delay (not cancel) its start.

Washington has, for years, been trying to wean nations depending on fossil fuels (like crude oil) off traditional suppliers and towards US natural gas — a costly venture for shifting from fuel to gas isn’t as easy as pressing a button.

Political analysts on both sides of The Atlantic agree that security of Europe’s oil supplies will not be guaranteed any better if dependence is shifted from Russian to American suppliers.

As a result, some industry analysts are suggesting Europe’s only sure independent alternative is replacing both fossil fuels and natural gas with nuclear energy for domestic uses.

Some also suggest non-aligned oil producers in untapped and uninvolved regions, like Guyana, can benefit if Europe’s supplies from Russia get choked, as affected European nations and energy-dependent enterprises will be forced to look beyond traditional suppliers for new sources.

Analysts with extended vision keep one eye on predictions that Guyana will be producing one million barrels per day in the next decade and the other on current prices hovering around the US $100 and US $120 per barrel range.

Likewise, the big oil companies, with their eons of experience in shaping and/or influencing global prices and policies, will naturally wish to and create the mechanisms to continue fuelling their profitable returns on investments.

Ditto those Guyanese who, after six decades of independence and 52 years living on the peripheral borders of poverty, are understandably anxious to start to feel the royalties and returns from Oil & Gas revenues in their pockets, as well as new and better-paying jobs, better education facilities for their children and best health and housing opportunities for themselves and families in the new national economic dispensation.

As one Guyanese mused with more serious meaning: “Nobody wants to drink the oil, but we all want a taste…”

But it’s not funny at all, as one of the worst mistakes too many planners in countries with new-found oil wealth have made historically is planning how to spend the new wealth without ensuring the most-needy are among the first to directly taste the benefit of Oil & Gas earnings and royalties.

In the past three decades, some OPEC nations that boasted having “more oil than sand” have been forced to introduce taxation and others have been left unable to access all their oilfields due to the after-effects of war– and still others have remained oil-rich and dirt-poor nations thanks to bad management – and corruption.

Earlier radical efforts from within to reduce Caribbean and Latin American dependence on big oil were torpedoed by political sanctions serving extra-regional economic interests.

But Guyana and neighbouring oil-producing nations are cooperating without threatening the traditional dominant big players, as in the case of trilateral efforts between Guyana, Suriname and Brazil started in January 2021.

No sooner had Guyana’s three-day Energy Conference ended on February 20, it was announced that a French company had discovered yet another oil deposit in neighboring Suriname.

It’s crystal clear, from all indications, that The Guiana Shield is the new world oil frontier, leading to the normal goldrush that follows by big oil.

It’s clear too, that Guyana is making best use of available experiences and lessons from other oil-producing nations to chart its present and future.

Indeed, the Energy Conference was a progressive mechanism to share information and perspectives related to the future of oil and gas, not only for the Guiana Shield, but also other nations joining the global energy club.

As such, while looking inward and over neighbouring fences, as the latest new player on the global oil bloc, Guyana’s government is also evidently looking beyond its continental and marine borders as it plans for the long haul.

But the government is not-at-all taking eyes off the people’s legitimate short-and-medium-term expectations, convinced as it is that it simply has to meet the expectations of a people who were earlier promised loads of fry cash in their pockets before one liquid ounce of Guyana oil was sold.

But the conference also opened new areas of interest and concern offering new perspectives on old challenges and innovative solutions to old and new problems, with other oil-producing nations sharing a global platform in the middle of the Guiana Shield.

With eons of experience exporting natural resources over which it never had any price control, Guyana’s accumulated wealth of related knowledge, applied appropriately in the new era, will lay the basis for another new beginning with old ways giving way to new waves of innovative ideas purposefully marrying nature, science and technology to generate wealth to better the nation’s interests, starting with Putting People First.