The announcement earlier this month by the Canadian-based oil and gas exploration company, CGX Energy Inc that a semi-submersible drilling rig is due to arrive in Guyana by month end to commence offshore drilling for oil appears to have gone largely unnoticed by Guyanese as a whole; never mind the fact that the announcement clearly seeks to provide the country with a definitive signal that we might now have inched much closer to becoming an oil-producing country.
Part of the reason for the seeming indifference almost certainly has to do with the fact that, over the years, from as far back as the 1970s, successive governments have repeatedly pronounced on Guyana’s potential as an oil-producing country without that prospect being realized. In effect, hopes of an oil find that would rapidly transform the country’s fortunes by both earning significantly increased levels of foreign earnings, and bringing an end to the country’s energy woes which have both seriously constrained the growth of the productive sectors of the economy and undermined the quality of national life, have long been dismissed by many as little more than a fanciful story. Government too, by exploring alternative energy pursuits, particularly hydropower, appeared to have long decided that economic growth could not wait around for the arrival of oil wealth.
What, in very recent years, has served to further diminish popular interest in the country’s oil prospects are the disappointments and delays that had come to be associated with the
