The near simultaneous fortune-changing oil finds offshore Guyana and Suriname inside what one writer has described as “a new petroleum province……in the Guyana/Suriname Basin” has had the effect of shining an insightful light in the direction of the wider global oil search, going forward, never mind the fact that the global fossil fuel industry now appears to be locked in an intense battle with the rapidly growing global climate change ‘army’ for its long-term future.
What has happened offshore Guyana and Suriname, respectively, has caused contingents of fortune-seekers to descend on the two countries in successive animated waves, in search of their respective ‘cuts’ of what is believed to be the biggest contemporary ‘game’ in the oil and gas industry at this time.
Guyana and Suriname are now aware that the basin having been opened up, not only has the area become significantly de-risked, but from all the geo-scientific accounts, there is a great deal more oil to be found in the area than that which has already been – in the instance of Guyana up to this time – reached and exploited.
The transformed global perceptions of the two neighbouring countries, frequently described by writers as being among the poorest in South America, has been significant. Previously, not a great deal ever ‘made’ the international media headlines about the maritime boundary dispute between the two countries. The dispute has, over time, served to trigger in-the-river incidents, not least the systematic harassment of Guyanese fishermen by Surinamese military patrol boats and in 2000 the eviction from this country’s Atlantic waters by the Surinamese military of oil explorers sanctioned by the Government of Guyana.
With the discovery of oil the pattern has changed markedly. International reportage on both countries has, these days, become far more frequent even if overwhelmingly oil-centred.
Guyana and Suriname are both members of a Caribbean Community which has always lacked the clout to play a serious placatory role insofar as the river dispute is concerned. It has to be said, however, that at a people-to-people level the two countries have enjoyed excellent relations, even if this has failed to metamorphose into an environment in which a resolution of the boundary dispute can nudged forward.
If one might have thought that in just over five years two poor countries that have been belatedly blessed with potentially fortune-changing transformations on account of their respective huge oil finds, might, somehow, have found a way out of their territorial dispute, that has not been the case. Attempts to apply a diplomatic solution have ‘crashed and burned’ at the level of successive prickly bilateral engagements. This lack of success at the diplomatic level has served to exemplify a bewildering dichotomy between the excellent people-to-people relations, on the one hand and the unrelenting flare-ups over the river dispute, not least the frequent ‘cat-sparring’ between the Corentyne fishermen and the Surinamese military patrol boats seeking to evict them from the river.
Having, these days, drawn a greater measure of attention to themselves on account of their ‘oil wealth’ both Guyana and Suriname are hoping – or at least so it seems – that the potential for such gain as might be derived from a collaborative approach to developing their oil and gas sectors might serve to remove or at least dwarf the significance of the Corentyne river dispute. The frequency of the cross-border visits by the countries’ two presidents, including President Santokhi’s visit here a few days ago, would appear to suggest that the two Presidents have struck up a relationship which might play a role in helping to remove the Corentyne river dispute as a wedge between the two countries, though, up to this time, persuasive evidence is yet to materialize to that effect.
Back in June this year, even as it was beginning to appear, increasingly, that the ‘diplomatic dance’ between the two Presidents might be heading in the direction of reducing the significance of the river dispute as a wedge between the two countries, another slew of complaints from fishermen plying their trade in the Corentyne river jettisoned that thought. Frankly, incidents of that kind appear to point to the likelihood that officialdom in Paramaribo see no nexus between what appears to be the increasingly close relations that have materialized between the two countries’ out of their near simultaneous oil discoveries and the longstanding river dispute.
Interestingly, deliberately, it seemed, none of the twenty-eight substantive points articulated in the Joint communique issued at the conclusion of last week’s official visit here by President Santokhi, made even the remotest mention of the problems in the Corentyne river and how these might be settled though “the issuance of SK fishing licenses to Guyanese fisherfolk” who ply their trade in the river merited a kind of detached mention therein.
It would seem that oil and the prospects that it holds for the significant socio-economic development of both countries has not, or at least so it seems, created a foundation for a corresponding shift in the assertive, even heavy-handed posture of the Surinamese military to the policing of the Corentyne River. One feels, frankly, that this is likely to be the biggest challenge to the elaborate bridge-building ‘blueprint’ which Presidents Ali and Santokhi would appear to be seeking to create for bilateral relations between the two countries, going forward.
