Part 4: A Rear View of Guyana’s Economic and Energy Security Progress

FOLLOWING the February 14-17, 2023 Guyana Energy Conference and Expo, this final in the four-part series about the endless search for El Dorado five centuries ago and the current transformation to a future fuelled by oil & gas, looks at the new national energy landscape and highlights some regional cooperation possibilities.

ANY review of Guyana’s four-day International Energy Conference and Expo (February 14-17) cannot but conclude that it was more successful than might have been planned — or even imagined.

It wasn’t only about bringing oil & gas stakeholders together to discuss plans and exchange views, but more about examining where the global energy sector is now and what to do to harness available energy for development, in a world where sustainability and transitions combine to make forward planning not only necessary, but vital.

Conference presentations generally indicated brimming optimism about Guyana’s future and a general sentiment of common agreement that the country is on the right track.

Same with discussions on prospects for Caribbean energy cooperation, from the open offer by Trinidad & Tobago to share its decades-old experience in natural gas development to help neighbouring newcomer Guyana develop that sector, to Suriname’s willingness to develop cross-border energy cooperation with its continental Caribbean neighbour and St Vincent & The Grenadines’ encouragement to embrace all opportunities to collaborate for the region’s common good.

Ditto the many examples of Guyana being serious about learning from the mistakes of other oil and gas producers to ensure that it takes the right decisions to use energy revenues to develop other sectors and avoid over-dependence on oil & gas.

The conference also demonstrated the innovative thinking driving Guyana’s thrust to ensure that new earnings are shared across its vast land, as demonstrated by the sale of carbon credits and designating 15% (US $22 million) to the nation’s First Peoples — to buttress that already budgeted by government for 241 Amerindian villages that’ll receive the money and decide (on their own) how it’ll be used.

The conference also heard of plans to encourage the nation’s youth to tap into the lucrative energy sector; and the Expo displayed just how quickly the local, regional and international private sectors were able to enter and integrate to provide goods and services to the ever-expanding energy sector.

Thousands of ordinary Guyanese, including students, toured the hundreds of booths featuring products and services of providers from Africa, Arab states, Barbados, Britain, Canada, China, India, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and the USA (among others), including scores based in Guyana.

There’s also the overwhelming international attention brought by world news coverage, with major oil & gas publications reporting on the positive highlights that have made Guyana the fastest-growing oil-based economy today and the place where, with reserves estimated by ever-increasing billions of barrels and trillions of dollars, more energy companies are looking to invest.

The international financial institutions are advising caution and engagement of early steps to reduce dependence on oil & gas and to keep corruption at bay, while the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is ever ready to work with Guyana to improve the region’s energy security, which Caribbean leaders attending the conference twinned with Guyana’s lead responsibility for CARICOM food security.

The major companies involved in the Stabroek Block have together committed to increase their investments by expanding existing ones and continuing to support Guyana’s efforts to use its successful model to internationalize the carbon-credit sales mechanism.

All this happened while the world continues to adjust to the new realities that followed the armed conflict in Ukraine a year ago, which resulted in sanctions and other actions that seriously upstaged and radically changed how the world turns, from the effects on increased food and fuel prices to the interruption of delivery of emergency food aid to starving populations facing famine, mainly in Africa and Asia.

But the global economic blowback from Ukraine also seriously affected the poor in the richest countries in Europe, North America, Asia and The Pacific, where prices also rose way beyond wages and eroded people’s ability to pay bills. Many were forced to choose between paying for food or fuel, also with Europe and North America facing their worst ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 2022, which has snowed into a 2023 that promises continuing inflation and recession for as long as the war continues.

Guyana hasn’t failed to note the inconsistencies that saw the very nations that preached ‘Zero Emissions’ waste no time to return quickly to the use of coal and fossil fuels and reactivation of nuclear plants.

But as President, Dr Irfaan Ali, Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo and Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat all made clear in their many conference interventions, Guyana is planning on the basis of existing realities and not wishes or dreams, with clear short, medium and long-term plans in place for having the gas-to-energy project on line by December, production of 1.2 billion barrels-per-day (bpd) by December 2027 and 100% renewable energy by 2050.

Guyana’s increasing energy demands are being addressed through several sustainable oil & gas and renewable energy projects, side by side; and the country is on course for the amazing transformation predicted (and already being felt), with cumulative oil funds estimated to reach G$2.2 trillion by 2026, with annual transfers of US $1.2 billion.

Fast forward to tomorrow – and projections are that economic growth will hover above 25% annually over the next four years, by which time the billion-bpd target will likely have been reached, with electricity bills halved and much more available for more public expenditure on everything that can help ensure the nation’s ever-growing oil wealth is ever increasingly shared with wider sections of the population through more projects and mechanisms that will eventually rank Guyanese (sooner than later) high-up on the global index of the World’s Happiest People.

The Energy Conference and Expo indeed went a long way to convince the world that Guyana’s future is being well mapped out.