…will now doom us?
Now that Raphael Trotman, the Minister of Natural Resources, has released the Exxon oil contract, Guyana will just have to hold its breath as Guyanese await the “Hezekiah Effect” to kick in. This dreaded doomsday “Effect”, of course, was what Trotman assured us was the reason he hadn’t fessed up when he signed off on the bonus and other financial inducements from the mega-oil company, as it obtained the right to exploit the Stabroek field which has 3.2 billion barrels of oil – and counting.
You don’t remember what’s the Hezekiah Effect, dear reader? Shame on you!! Here we are, just finished celebrating the birth of the prophesied One and all that!! Are you still in a haze (daze?) after your spirituous excesses? Either way, you should punish yourself with a “time out” for your transgression! Anyhow, your (virtuous) Eyewitness will refresh your memory about Trotman’s prophesy.
Hezekiah, you see, was an early King of Judah, who scrupulously followed the Lord’s 10 Commandments. He was so favoured that the Lord once killed off 180,000 Assyrians who were Hezekiah’s enemies. (And no! It’s not genocide when the Lord does the mass killing.) Hezekiah even held off the dastardly Babylonians, who were the rising superpower of the day.
But, one day, Hezekiah fell ill and accepted a get-well gift from the Babylonians…and in a fit of bonhomie, “showed all of his treasures, all the silver and gold, and everything in his arsenal”!! That was it!! The prophet Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘Hear the word of the Lord: “Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and what your fathers have accumulated until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left.” And lo and behold, a century or so later, Judah was conquered and the people taken into slavery into Babylon!!
All (you understand, don’t you, dear reader?) because Hezekiah showed off his wealth. And this is what Trotman, reprising the role of Hezekiah, was warning us against. That rising Empire to the west, Venezuela, has long had its eyes on our territory of Essequibo. We had held them off through deft diplomacy, and were about to inflict the coup de’ grace by taking them to the World Court.
Now the lawyers/warriors that fight battles in the World Court don’t come cheap…and Trotman/Isaiah didn’t want the dastardly Venezuelans to know we had an US$18 million bonus to pay those lawyers — never mind the discovered oil was worth BILLIONS!
So, while some are crowing they forced Trotman to reveal our wealth — they don’t care that in 100 years we’ll be dragged off to Caracas in captivity!!
By the Rivers of Babylon!!
…and the gas contract
The giveaways on oil pale when compared to the cavalier way in which the gas that’ll be brought up with the petroleum was treated. But as the local head of the Texas-based Exxon said, Guyana’s just a “greenhorn” in the oil business. And if you think the terms of the oil contract were bad – boy, were we fleeced on the gas! It’s clear Trotman was even more full of it than we thought!
Now, there are trillions of cubic feet of gas mixed in with our petroleum – not even mentioning fields containing solely gas. The contract however, says, we’re on our own when it comes to this gas – which could’ve taken care of all our energy needs plus selling the excess in liquified form. The gas will be separated from the oil in the FPSO, and some will be pumped back into those wells that have been determined to need “gas lifts” to bring up the oil. We can then take the excess, or Exxon just burns (“flare”) it off!!
Hence the rush to get a contractor to bring the gas ashore and utilise it!!
If you think being taken into slavery’s bad, imagine what could happen when a govt builds latrines just when it’s about to s’it!!