Oil boom transforms Guyana, prompting a scramble for spoils

ANN’S GROVE, Guyana — Villagers in this tiny coastal community lined up on the soggy grass, leaned into the microphone and shared their grievances as someone in the crowd yelled, “Speak the truth!” And so they did. “Please help us,” said Evadne Pellew-Fomundam — a 70-year-old who lives in Ann’s Grove, one of Guyana’s poorest communities — to the country’s prime minister and other officials who organized the meeting to hear people’s concerns and boost their party’s image ahead of municipal elections. “The country isn’t preparing and wasn’t prepared for the sudden discovery of oil,” said Lucas Perelló, a political science professor at New York’s Skidmore College. The USAID report accused the previous administration of a lack of transparency in negotiations and oil deals with investors, adding that the “tremendous influx of money opens many avenues for corruption.” When The Associated Press asked Prime Minister Mark Phillips about concerns over corruption, his press officers tried to end the interview before he interjected, saying his party had a zero-tolerance policy: “Wherever corruption exists, we are committed to rooting it out.” Guyana signed the deal in 2016 with the ExxonMobil consortium, which includes Hess Corporation and China’s CNOOC, but did not make the contract public until 2017 despite demands to release it immediately. Macdonald said in a statement that the terms of the company’s agreement with the government “are competitive with other countries at a similar stage of resource discovery.” Norton said he was concerned about the current government’s focus on building infrastructure instead of developing people, adding that he worries the oil wealth will intensify ethnic divisions in Guyana and create other problems: “It will result in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.” Jagdeo, the vice president who once served as president, told AP that his party has created a special fund for oil revenues with safeguards to prevent corruption, including appointment of an independent monitor and a board of directors to oversee the fund along with the finance minister.