GUYANA: IMF advises against development of national oil company

…tells Guyana to improve oil contract terms for higher profit instead

– Apr 26, 2022 Kaieteur News – By Zena Henry

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advised Guyana to secure a higher share of profit oil through its model Production Sharing Agreement, rather than actively participating in the task of petroleum development through a national oil company.

Another commentator opined that having a strategic investor in Guyana’s oil company would give that person or entity a permanent lien on all of Guyana’s oil resources. That means that the strategic investor would have the right to keep possession of property belonging to Guyana until it pays any potential debt that is owed. This is a recipe for cronyism and nepotism, it was suggested.In one of the institution’s 2019 documents providing technical support to the government, the Fund concluded that there is no strong business case to show that Guyana would receive more value from its oil endowments if it were to participate as a partner via a national oil company (NOC) in the development of the oil blocks.           

GUYANA: Three more oil discoveries in Stabroek Block; oil resources near 11 billion barrels

Newsroom Guyana – April 26, 2022

ExxonMobil has made three new discoveries of oil in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana. With these discoveries, Guyana’s recoverable oil resources has now increased to nearly 11 billion barrels of oil.

See below full press release from ExxonMobil:

ExxonMobil has made three new discoveries offshore Guyana and increased its estimate of the recoverable resource for the Stabroek Block to nearly 11 billion oil-equivalent barrels.

The three discoveries are southeast of the Liza and Payara developments and bring to five the discoveries made by ExxonMobil in Guyana in 2022.     

GUYANA promotes agriculture; fends off protectionism charge in oil diversification — By Mohamed Hamaludin

By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN

“Oil “don’t spoil,” the late Dr. Eric Williams, prime minister of petroleum-rich Trinidad and Tobago, was reported to have once said. To which the late Forbes Burnham, then prime minister of agriculture-oriented Guyana, retorted, “But you can’t eat it.”

What happens when you have both oil and food? Lots of headache.

Tension between the two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations has existed for decades, even though Trinidad and Tobago once wrote off a US$400 million debt Guyana owed for petroleum products, according to former Guyana Parliament Speaker Ralph Ramkarran.

Many Guyanese traveled to other CARICOM countries to live and work in the 1970s and 1980s, “creating monumental chaos” during transit at Trinidad’s Piarco International Airport “with huge bundles packed with goods being brought back to Guyana for trading,” Ramkarran wrote in a Guyanese Online column.“ No single Guyanese passing through Trinidad during this era, and even much later, has not experienced surly, enhanced scrutiny and less than accommodating reception at Trinidad’s Immigration and Customs desks.”         

UKRAINE: The awful truth is dawning: Putin may win in Ukraine. The result would be catastrophe – By Simon Tisdall

A Russian victory would herald a new age of instability, economic fragmentation, hunger for millions and social unrest

PHOTO: A Russian soldier patrols at the Mariupol drama theatre, which was hit by an airstrike last month. Photograph: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images

Sun 24 Apr 2022 06.00 BST – THE GUARDIAN

The contrast was startling. In New York, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, launched a belated, desperately needed initiative to halt the war in Ukraine. “At this time of great peril and consequence, he [Guterres] would like to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace,” his spokesman said. The UN chief, he revealed, was proposing immediate, in-person talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv.

At roughly the same time as this hopeful development unfolded, the UK’s Boris Johnson, riding a “Partygate” getaway plane to India, was colourfully rubbishing peace efforts. Putin, he claimed, was an untrustworthy reptile. “I really don’t see how the Ukrainians can easily sit down and come to some kind of accommodation. How can you negotiate with a crocodile when it’s got your leg in its jaws?” Johnson asked.         

TRAVEL: Electric Vehicles Transition – The declining future of gas stations

Alternative Energy

— As EVs hit the road, gas stations will have to adapt or risk going out of business.

By Rebecca Heilweil Apr 13, 2022, RECODE Newsletter

Slowly but surely, electric cars and trucks are taking over American highways. The White House aims for half of new vehicles sold in the US to be EVs by 2030, and auto giants like GM and Volvo want to go all-electric in a similar time frame. As utility companies hurry to expand the number of charging stations — a critical step for the EV transition — the future of the gas station is in doubt.

Right now, gas stations are a regular part of American life, a place drivers go on a daily or weekly basis to fill up and sometimes grab a snack. But the fuel pump plus convenience store concept has much less to offer the country’s small but growing number of EV owners.

GUYANA: ExxonMobil seeks another EPA approval for fifth oil project – Uaru+

Apr 12, 2022 – Kaieteur News

In January 2020, oil giant, ExxonMobil announced its 16th discovery, Uaru-1, in the Stabroek Block of Guyana’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
In April last year, the company announced another oil find, this time its 19th dubbed Uaru-2 in the Stabroek Block. ExxonMobil said that the well is located approximately 6.8 miles (11 kilometres) south of the Uaru-1 well.

The two separate announcements or discoveries are, however, being pursued through one application process, as one project, under the guise of Uaru+ as was announced by ExxonMobil Guyana President, Alistair Routledge, as the final investment decision for its fourth project, the Yellowtail development, which was declared last week.         

GUYANA: OIL: Is Guyana the next Angola? Oil wealth with poverty, debt and corruption -Opinion

GUYANA BEWARE:  Apr 06, 2022 – Editorial – Kaieteur News

The PPP/C Government is engaging in a huge gamble using the rich assets of this society to entrap it and endanger it.  This was the stark warning embedded in the article titled, “Guyana may not steer clear of failure with oil if fatal flaws in oil deal not corrected -Int’l Analysts” (KN April 3).  Fatal is a frightening word, and we don’t use it recklessly, for it has a world of meaning.  As we use it (fatal), our hope is that what happened to Angola does not become Guyana’s nightmare.

Since the 1990s, Angola has been the destination of the hunter-predators that are oil companies.  They went there in droves, and the names should be familiar to Guyanese because they are right here now.  America’s Exxon and France’s Total are two of the bigger names that led the charge into Angola.  From a peak of 1.9 million barrels a day, production declined to around 1.4 million barrels daily last year.

One would have thought that Angolans were rolling in prosperity, among the most well taken care of people in the world.  They are not, and now come the lessons, another cautionary tale for Guyanese.           

WORLD– The Emerging Global Food Shortage That Should Chill You – 20 Facts – video

Epic Economist – April 07, 2022.

A global food shortage of catastrophic proportions has already begun, and things are only going to get worse from this point on.

The information we’re about to expose might be hard to digest, but we would like to encourage you to share this message with everyone you care for so that people can prepare for what is coming. Everybody deserves to know what is truly going on, and they deserve an opportunity to get ready before this crisis gets out of control.         

RUSSIA: Ukraine invasion — How Russia rescued the ruble – NPR Newsletter

April 5, 2022 –– Paddy Hirsch – NPR Planet Money Newsletter

PHOTO: A woman walks past a currency exchange office in central Moscow – Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

Russia said last week that it wants the European countries that buy its natural gas to make their payments in rubles, rather than dollars or euros. A month ago, that might have seemed like a pretty good deal: The ruble was down 40%, at 139 rubles to the dollar, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since that low point on March 7, however, the Russian ruble has staged a dramatic recovery. At the time of this writing, it was trading at 84 to the dollar, which is right back where it was at the time of the invasion. And this is no dead cat bounce. It’s a sharp and sustained recovery that made the ruble the world’s top-performing currency in March.

Yet all the sanctions imposed when the war began are still in place, and in some cases they’re even more robust. So how have the Russians managed to revive their currency?         

ENERGY: Petroleum – Modern history of oil on a Map – video

ENERGY: Petroleum – Modern history of oil on a Map – video

GEO HISTORY – 8,093,957+ views – Mar 2, 2019

Let’s retrace on an animated map a summary of the modern history of petroleum until the present day.