…oil gambit
From the moment Raphael Trotman floated the notion of an oil refinery for Guyana — and then hired an “expert,” back in January, to determine its ‘feasibility” — your Eyewitness said he was wasting our money. The fella was going to be paid $10M to do a “desk study” — meaning he’d just look at the literature of the subject and make a pronouncement — which is precisely what your Eyewitness did back then, and concluded:
“Trotman’s just hired a $10 million consultant to advise him as to whether we should build a refinery here!! Has he worked out why Trinidad loses its shirt every year on its refinery? Or why Hess closed the largest refinery in the Caribbean? Or that Uganda’s minuscule 30,000bbl/d refinery will cost US$4.3 billion?”
So now that the “expert” has also pronounced that a refinery is just not feasible for us, does your Eyewitness get even $1M for giving Trotty an early warning of what to expect??
But it all goes back to the cluelessness of Trotman for the portfolio he holds — Natural Resources. We all know he’s just stringing along the APNU/AFC supporters about jobs being “in the pipeline”, but was he so dumb to think his hired “expert” would support his pie-in-the-sky nonsense?? Hey! The “expert” was part of Hess when they closed the aforementioned Refinery in the Virgin Islands!! If Hess couldn’t keep a refinery going, can Guyana?
Trotman said they needed the study ‘cause his Government was being inundated with requests to set up a refinery here!! So why did GUYANA have to do a feasibility study? Shouldn’t those “investors” — if they exist — foot that bill? After all, it’d be their money — a minimum of US$5 billion!! – on the line. Right?? Or maybe not. Was it a “political investment” demanding dividends??
And that brings us to that other airy-fairy dream: the US$500M “oil facility” of Trotman’s trumpeting. Your Eyewitness had also punctured this “there’s jobs ahead” ploy. And just like with the refineries, the pin used was “Who’s gonna cough up the US$500M?” ExxonMobil, the biggest whale in the oil ocean, already said very clearly they ain’t interested!! And if the company that’ll be employing the 300 employees on their FPSO doesn’t need this facility, who does?? Another “political investor”??
Trotman had better spend some time figuring out if Guyana will EVER get any money from our undersea oil. Exxon might’ve sunken, let’s say, a cool billion (US) dollars on exploration and the FPSO front end engineering costs on Stabroek.
But they’ve just spent US$6B on shale oil…which is cheaper and safer than ours!! Let’s not count our barrels before they’re pumped!!
…the “right thing”
On the “ANSA Pharma Arch” fiasco, the PM’s Shill, otherwise known as “DPI” (dots per inch??) claimed it was all due to “a desire by this Government to please and to do the right thing.” His Govt, he opined, needs to be “shrewd”. He should take his own advice: be “shrewd,” and not “shrewish,” as he is wont to do!!
So let’s look at the advice from MLK, famously offered by Spike Lee at the end of his film ‘Do the Right Thing’: “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys a community and makes brotherhood impossible.”
Isn’t this what the present actions of the Shill’s government amount to to its “non-supporters”??
…Duty-free
You’d think we’ve heard it all about the rules on importing “duty-free” vehicles, right?? Wrong!! Yesterday we learnt something new. When anyone breaks the rules, they’re hauled before the courts; but when the GRA breaks the rules for one of its own, it’s “flexibility”!!
