There has been an undeniable air of expectancy here in Guyana arising out of the disclosure last year by the United States company, Exxon Mobil that commercial deposits of oil and gas had been offshore Guyana. Public discourse about Guyana’s oil prospects goes back several decades and if the chance that one day we might ‘strike’ oil had always remained embedded in our collective consciousness, it would also have occurred to many amongst us that, perhaps, we might have been chasing a pipe dream.
The announcement that Guyana was ‘oil country’ brought a sort of muted elation amidst a population that was still ‘taking in’ the reality of a change of political administration that had been in power for close to a quarter of a century.
