Trotman: Oil in a decade but hydro still quickest way to energy self-sufficiency

President David Granger (centre), visits ExxonMobil’s oil rig (SN file photo)

Newly appointed Minister of National Resources, Raphael Trotman has told Stabroek Business that while the 2015 announcement that ExxonMobil has discovered significant deposits of oil offshore Guyana could transform the country’s economy, he still believes that the country’s short to medium term energy ‘salvation’ lay in hydropower.

Government, Trotman said in a recent interview, continued to keep in focus the country’s prospects for successfully exploiting its hydropower potential despite a May 20, 2015 announcement by ExxonMobil Corporation that its affiliate Esso Exploration & Production Guyana Ltd. had made a significant oil find on the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana.

And according to Trotman it was “a paradox” that the country’s oil find had coincided with its pursuit of “clean energy” options. “Even as we continue to factor in our oil find to the longer term development of the country’s economy we