At Amici Restaurant, Georgetown's most exclusive restaurant, a shared plate of Wagyu beef costs $350. No dessert falls below 20. Jamaican Gregory Lynch, a huge guy dressed head to toe in black, opens the door every day to ministers, tycoons, oil company employees, Indian music singers, soap opera actors and wealthy people of dubious origin. Construction vehicles cause traffic jams day and night. Traveling by plane from a country in the region costs $1,500. A hotel on the coast costs 700 per night. Taxi drivers grimace when offered less than 30. Supermarkets are full of imported products worth a fortune. A new stadium will be built next year for the local cricket team, the Amazon Warriors. In the small country of Guyana, money comes from the earth.
For decades, this former British colony remained hidden from the eyes of the world. It would be difficult for someone from the outside to pinpoint it on a map. When its fortunes suddenly changed in 2015, it was the second poorest country in Latin America: it is currently the fastest-growing economy in the world, according to the IMF. The American ExxonMobil and its partners Hess and the Chinese Cnooc found more than 11 billion barrels of oil off their coasts, a discovery that the country could live on comfortably for the next 20 years. Foreign investment and infrastructure expansion have skyrocketed. Experts hope that over time the 800,000 residents will have one of the highest per capita incomes.
A full-scale oil drilling ship in an ExxonMobil permanent exhibition at the Guyana National Museum in April. Matias Delacroix (AP)
But a problem from the past disrupts this honeymoon. Venezuela, a border country, claims Essequibo, a region that makes up two-thirds of Guyana and was awarded to that country in an 1899 arbitration award. Off the coast of this jungle country, twice the size of Portugal, has produced some of these oil discoveries. The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has mapped a new map of his country that includes the Essequibo, which represents a real declaration of intent. Maduro and his Guyanese counterpart Irfaan Ali will meet this Thursday in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the country that temporarily presides over Celac and acts as mediator. The international community has expressed concern that the disagreement could escalate into a military conflict.
“The Venezuelan threat has caused concern in Guyana, I’m not going to lie,” Mark Phillips, the country’s prime minister, said in his office. “But Venezuela cannot stop our prosperity. They cannot annex Essequibo, which Mr. Maduro says is not possible. We will never agree to a request from Maduro and his government. We respect the work of the court [Internacional de Justicia, donde se dirime el conflicto]“Phillips is steadfast.
Venezuelan authorities unveil the map of Venezuela annexing Essequibo on December 8 in Caracas, Venezuela. Gaby Oraa (Getty Images)
The effects of the oil boom are shocking. In 2022, GDP grew by 62%, and growth of 37% is forecast for this year. It currently produces 400,000 barrels per day. Authorities and oil companies plan to increase production to 1.2 million in 2027. Petroleum experts had never experienced such an explosion before. The Prime Minister explains that they want to use this money to improve education, infrastructure (currently very poor), universities and hospitals. The government plans to directly connect the capital Georgetown with other cities and build a highway to the border with Brazil. The country is full of cranes, scaffolding and workers working 24 hours a day.
The journey from the dark night of Georgetown, where there is little light, into the halls of the Carnival Casino leads to some moments of blindness. Customers play poker, roulette and slot machines. Bling Bling. Chinese people who work as dishwashers can spend $10,000 in one evening. Musa Deveci, Turkish, 47 years old, married, three children, Fenerbahce fan, hairstyle parted on one side, is one of the people in charge of the casino. “It's crowded all the time, there are a lot of foreigners there, from Canada, from the US… There are people who come from outside to set up restaurants and shops… You can tell that Guyana is fashionable,” he tells Deveci . At the helm is another manager, Metin Kaya, also Turkish. Why are those responsible here all Turkish? “Where there is a casino, there is a Turk. We are dealing with it very well,” says Kaya, married to a Colombian who speaks five languages. He is more skeptical about the consequences of the oil boom, he doesn't notice it so much at the gaming tables, although his boss, an Israeli tycoon with villas in the best capitals in the world, wants to build a hotel-casino with more than 300 rooms next year . Future vision.
Theodore Kahn, Andean region analyst at Control Risks, has seen Guyana's growth firsthand. Overall, he says, the possibilities have expanded and it is expected that the situation will continue to improve. The state budget has multiplied. However, there is a bottleneck on the administrative side. Investments and the influx of foreign companies have exceeded the capacity of public authorities, resulting in slow procedures and approvals. Procurement of workers or building materials is not that easy. The economy is growing beyond its capabilities. “There is a growing dependence on oil, which already accounts for 70% of the economy. This poses risks in the event that the market falls. At some point the price will collapse. The big question is how Guyana will react,” explains Kahn.
The Carnival Casino in Georgetown, the largest casino in Guyana.Juan Diego Quesada
Another challenge is ensuring that this money that comes from the earth is distributed and does not end up in the hands of a corrupt elite, as has happened in other countries with an unexpected surge in prosperity. The government is being replaced, not without racial tensions or allegations of corruption, by two political movements, one led by Afro-Guyanese, descendants of slaves, and the other by Indo-Guyanese. Currently in power is the Indo-Guyanese People's Progressive Party (PPP), which criticized the Exxon agreements during the election campaign, but when it came to power it swept any dispute under the rug. William Scott, a clothing salesman from Anna Regina, a town in Essequibo, the disputed region, believes that prosperity is not felt by humble people like him. The government expects average per capita income to rise from $10,000 to $30,000 in a few years. But Scott sees the present as a burden that will continue to weigh on the future: “I feel like regular people will benefit from this.”
The highways are littered with ExxonMobil billboards touting job creation and promising cheaper energy. The company has invested $1 billion in community programs. In the advertising, smiling, modern people appear in idyllic, almost film-like spaces. This is still not the reality in Guyana, which is struggling with a 48% poverty rate, poor roads, access to very precarious employment and rampant inflation. Oil paints a positive future for a country that is still developing.
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