So, like, there’s this whole thing going on in Georgetown, Guyana, where heavy trucks are hauling stuff for huge construction projects, making the city sound like a noisy construction site. They’re building a new bridge over the Demerara River, an artificial island, fancy buildings, and swanky hotels to show off the riches promised by the oil industry. ExxonMobil, a big shot in the fossil fuel world, is the kingpin of oil production in Guyana. Back in 2015, they hit the jackpot with one of the biggest oil discoveries of the decade. Their little sidekick, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana, is leading the charge for the Stabroek oil block, a massive area off Guyana’s coast. The gang also includes Hess Corporation and CNOOC from China. Talk about a global posse.
Now, here’s the juicy part – while ExxonMobil is strutting around like a peacock, they’re also getting some heat for not playing by the rules. Rumor has it they didn’t bother with environmental licenses to ramp up production and rake in more cash from the three oil fields in the block. Those fields are churning out a whopping 650,000 barrels per day, and with three more in the pipeline, they’re looking to double that to 1.3 million barrels by 2027. That’s a whole lot of oil, folks. And guess what? The Amazon rainforest is the new cool kid on the block when it comes to oil exploration. It’s like the wild west of oil, holding about 20% of the world’s oil and gas reserves discovered between 2022 and 2024. But hold your horses, folks, ’cause there’s a lot of concern about how all this digging will mess with the forests and the locals.
Let’s talk numbers for a sec – in 2022, ExxonMobil raked in a jaw-dropping $413 billion globally. That’s like a gazillion times more than Guyana’s GDP, estimated at $14.7 billion. But here’s the kicker – even with all that oil money flowing in, poverty is still a big issue in Guyana. The UN says that in 2022, a whopping 43% of Guyanese folks were scraping by on less than $5.50 a day. Yikes. And don’t even get me started on the job situation. Unemployment is sky-high at 14%, one of the worst in Latin America. And here’s a fun fact – those shiny new buildings and bridges in Georgetown? Yeah, they’re being put up by Chinese companies with a bunch of Asian workers. Power outages are a daily thing in the city, but fear not – the government and ExxonMobil are teaming up on a $2 billion plan to zap power from offshore platforms to keep the lights on. Sounds fancy, right?
