(Kaieteur News) – To hear ExxonMobil tell it, the global oil leader is the best partner that Guyana can ever have. In the now customary manner, more often picked up by citizens, there is a disconnection between what ExxonMobil says, and what it does. The most recent example of this company practice involves the gas pipeline off the village of Crane, West Coast Demerara.
ExxonMobil had a great opportunity to prove itself a trustworthy partner of citizens. But the company would have none of that, flunked the trust test. Instead of transparency in the manner of a bona fide partner, ExxonMobil’s managers did what they have always done. They settled for stealth and secrecy on what is wrong with that pipeline near the Crane community.
If the pipeline has a defect it has a defect. Concealing that fact does nothing for the defect. It should be revealed so that this country’s citizens have some idea of what is going on in their oil sector, what is going on near to their community. The difference is that the Crane pipeline repair is not happening 200 kilometers from shore. It is happening in close proximity to the Crane shoreline. Citizens have every right to know what is going on. When pipeline repair is mentioned in Guyana, it is almost like surgery. There is nothing routine about it, for those who are bracing for the scalpel. It should be the same with villagers in the Crane area and those adjoining.
The works that ExxonMobil is doing may be maintenance, or follow-up, or tightening up on some part of the pipeline that cannot be left as it is. To do so would be risky, have unknown consequences, none of them small. Whatever the nature of the repair work off Crane, citizens have a right to know. It is in their interests to know, since their welfare can be badly impacted, except that nobody knows how much so. Keeping the repair work secret, refusing to share what the defects are, how many of them there are, and how they came about, can never be the way of a partner is a big oil business. But having set this pattern of behavior on Guyana for a number of years, there is no way that ExxonMobil is going to change its ways.
Truth be told, company officials know that they can operate this way, and they will be allowed to get away with it. The PPPC Government is the softest, as easy to roll as dough, partner that an oil company could wish for. Those who fill leadership seats are pale with fright, and are filled with dread, at doing anything that the big players at ExxonMobil would interpret as threatening, even as pushing too hard. And citizens are so preoccupied with finding affordable food to ease their hunger pangs, and disgusted at their sellout government and their treacherous political leaders, that they do not have the energy to put up a good fight. Even when their own welfare is at stake.
The pipeline that is under some type of repairs is not one that is decades old, or has been in operation round the clock. So, what could have gone wrong with it? Did something go so wrong that such a development has to be hidden from the eyes of citizens? This is one of the weaknesses that haunt people and companies that operate in secret, leaving many questions unanswered. They have to keep operating and living with secrets. We at this paper remind every citizen of this country about something they should never forget. Guyana is exposed, and they are exposed. In the event of an oil spill, a material pipeline defect (a number of them), the insurance plan that exists to protect Guyana and its peoples does not have much depth to it. This fact is what makes it even more compulsory for ExxonMobil to be an open book, so that citizens know where they stand, have some idea of what is happening. The government should not be casual about this. Every citizen should take every pipeline development as if their life depended on it.
Source: Kaieteur News
