The Energy Con-Conference – By Eusi Kwayana
In advertising and promoting the recent Energy Conference in Guyana the Government promotion said among other things, “Meet and Engage with Energy Experts” of global standing. Never since 1595 when Sir Walter Raleigh promoted Guyana as the home of a golden city has Guyana been in such demand among the money vultures that scour the earth.
First, they were the chartered royal companies empowered by European monarchs to take possession of foreign people they had never seen before and their god-given resources, and do with them as they please. India, Africa and the Caribbean as well as North America have all bled from this experience.
The present wealth gatherers are no longer royal chartered companies but trans-national corporations such as Exxon-Mobil, with the best equipped chartered accountants. Two facts will help to explain this argument: the eminent persons listed to speak at the conference included Guyanese leaders with a clear conflict of interest that follows them as leaders. As for the royal chartered companies those eminent Guyanese with the knowledge of the terrain, the environment and the impact of extraction on populations and ecology were not invited to speak. Those who attended did not even ask questions.
The second fact is that someone who is described as CEO of Exxon-Mobil said in his own voice, full of authority, words of this effect: Many things will be examined during this conference; however the agreements signed by your governments to empower Exxon-Mobil will not be one of these things. These two facts will help us to understand why the issues raised by people with environment issues like Attorney-at-law Melinda Janki with experience on the Exxon Guyana project, as well as ex-EPA head Dr. Vincent Adams and public critics like Mr. Glenn Lall and Mr. Christopher Ram, who were looking out for the interests of all Guyanese, were not even invited to speak at the grand indaba (Indian event where the governors met the native princes), or similar events on the African continent.
The restricted form of the Energy Conference excluding as it did free voices of Guyana, was in fact a new form of repression to fit in with sophisticated forms of exploitation.
The issues of the quality or equity or fairness of the agreements signed by various Guyanese rulers on their own watch, beginning according to the CEO in 1998, were like the laws of the needs and Persians (biblical), barred from informed and intelligent scrutiny. This is the new enlightenment in the age of big oil, emissions and climate change represented by our rulers as the chance of our lifetime.
SPILLS of secret information of the interaction between the Guyana government and the oil empire are already coming to light. See the following article.
Eusi Kwayana
– https://www.frelusja.com – One of the world’s oldest bloggers, (b. 1925), now writing orally, with computer helpers.
FRELUSJA.COM - By Eusi Kwayana 