On a December night four years ago, the 780,000 residents of Guyana won the main prize of the geological lottery: On Christmas Eve, oil began to flow into the sea off the capital Georgetown from the ExxonMobil platform floating 120 kilometers off the coast.
Since then they have lived in a kind of magic. Last year, Guyana was the fastest growing country in the world, with gross domestic product increasing by 62%, reports the International Monetary Fund. And it continues to grow rapidly, with economic growth estimated at 38% this year.
Dreams of prosperity and wealth emerged from the “moonless, nameless” nights of “the most terrible past, which stand in the four corners of my life”, in the verses of LeónGontran Damas (19121978) for the jazz icon Louis Armstrong ( 19011971) about colonial oppression in Europe in a society based on the syncretism of indigenous, African and Indian cultures.
Fifteen wells already opened in presalt suggest surprising potential for fossil fuel production in one of South America's poorest countries, which borders Brazil in the Amazon rainforest, 1,605 kilometers from the Roraima border.
According to World Bank calculations, Guyana has reserves equivalent to 10,250 barrels of oil per capita. That's more than the United Arab Emirates (10,100 barrels per capita), Saudi Arabia (8,100) and its restive northern neighbor Venezuela (9,500).
Venezuela is almost five times larger than Guyana, has a population 34 times larger, and is home to the magnificent birthplace of the largest known oil and natural gas reserves in the world. However, the kleptocracy led by Nicolás Maduro is keeping the country suffocated in political and economic decline.
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In contrast, Guyana has tripled the size of its economy in the last four years. When December ends, the local government will have closed its accounts with oil revenues ($12 billion), equivalent to what the Venezuelan dictatorship expects to receive in 2024.
“Maduro has drawn Lula into a complicated game with the USA in Guyana”
This, of course, renewed the greed of the Caracas kleptocracy. It simply evaporated an ocean of money (135 billion dollars) that came from the sale of oil and was diverted from the public budget through 781 unaccountable “companies” to conceal parastatal funds as the organization Transparency International notes.
Maduro faces a difficult reelection if there is a real and clean contest with liberal candidate María Corina Machado next year. The cooptation of the majority of opposition parties was pushed to the limit. Now he decided to turn to the “external enemy”.
It is threatening to invade Guyana to take twothirds of its territory, where its oil reserves are located. This recipe was tested with relative success in local elections at the beginning of the century by the late Colonel Hugo Chávez. Maduro has already said that he has a habit of drawing inspiration from morning conversations with Chávez, whom he sees “embodied” in birds flying over the gardens of the Miraflores Palace.
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Nothing strange in the landscape of Latin American political nonsense. There are those who talk to dogs (Javier Milei); suggest pork as a sex additive (Cristina Kirchner); link transgenic foods to hair loss and homosexuality (Evo Morales); Consider the coronavirus a fantasy (Jair Bolsonaro); that Napoleon invaded China or even that the Mensalão and the Petrolão were nothing more than an invention of American imperialism (Lula).
The problem, as always, is reality. With warmongering rhetoric, Maduro achieved the improbable: he caused the United States to intervene directly in the Amazon and developed a modern version of a military protectorate in Guyana. ExxonMobil was happy to answer him directly last week: “We’re not going anywhere.”
Maduro went further. He has trapped Lula, a rare ally, in a complicated game. In diplomacy, he promoted expectations of “leadership from Brazil,” as Irfaan Ali, the President of Guyana, reiterates. In domestic politics, because the government wants to explore oil in the Amazon, but fears a global reaction. Lula's ambition to strengthen his mandate at Petrobras by developing oil in the Amazon basin is fading in the face of global commitment to bring about an end to the fossil fuel era. In this case, Guyana will become the last new oil deposit in the region.
The columnists' texts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of VEJA
Published in VEJA on 15. December 2023, Issue No. 2872
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