By Arthur Deakin
In a recent offshore oil & gas conference in Houston, Texas, in the US, Guyana’s foreign minister said that the country’s economy is expected to grow 500 per cent by 2030. Guyana’s current US$6.8 billion real GDP would ignite to nearly US$35 billion, about the size of Paraguay, which has nine times the population of the former British colony. Per capita, this would make Guyana the second wealthiest country in Latin America, behind the Cayman Islands, a British territory.
This unprecedented growth will be driven by Guyana’s recent discovery of nine billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas. Despite the optimism, Guyana’s surge will also coincide with a world in which fossil fuels are losing favour among investors and governments. In May 2021, the International Energy Agency said that no new fossil fuel projects should be developed if the world aims to get to Net Zero by 2050. Three months later, the United Nation’s Panel on Clim#ate Change (IPCC) stated that the world can only emit 15 more years of industrial emissions to give it a 50 per cent chance of limiting temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
