Guyana’s first locally organised international energy conference is being hailed as a success for demonstrating local leadership in the development of the energy sector as well as the creation of a platform for linkages between foreign investors and local businesses.
“The conference and expo was in one word a success,” Communications Director Alex Graham told Stabroek News.
“We had set ourselves some very specific goals. One of them was to make this a broader discussion beyond oil and gas and to really embrace the wider scope of energy. Oil and gas is just one component of an energy mix that the world needs going forward and we wanted to make sure we covered the scope of energy and energy future and not just get bogged down in oil and gas,” Graham added.
He also emphasised the need to ensure that Guyana is not just seen as a place where persons can go and get some resources and leave “as has been an old model that we probably have suffered from in the colonial past. We want to demonstrate that in addition to being resource rich, we could provide the tough quality leadership for the development of these sectors and for the contribution to the future.”
The International Energy Conference and Expo, held under the theme ‘Charting a Sustainable Energy Future,’ was held from last Tuesday to Friday at the Marriott Hotel.
Among those in attendance and participating were the heads of government of Guyana, Barbados, Suriname and Ghana as well as the presidents of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, and Hess, John Hess.
The Irfaan Ali-led government had promised that the conference would see “high level participation” and the President and his Cabinet ministers were present on all of the days. They held meetings on the sidelines with heads of state, company representatives and potential investors in corporate rooms at the venue.
The organisers hoped that the conference and expo would inaugurate a staple event in the country’s calendar and attract senior executives and chief executives from major oil and gas companies.
Ali told attendees that Barbados also promised to help and Barbados Prime Mia Mottley said that next year she would assist in getting more frequent flights from Barbados to Guyana during the event.
Graham told Stabroek News that aside from the overarching objective of the conference, local organisers they set a number of other goals and exceeded their expectations.
“We had a goal that we get policymakers, industry professionals and practitioners and professors; what we called the four Ps,” he explained.
“Sometimes you have industry discussions that have no policy context because very often the people in the industry are not policymakers. And then you have policymakers who are setting policy without the input from all these other Ps. So we wanted to have a single discussion where you get …that into a single mix,” he added.
Graham said the list of attendees realized that goal.
Another goal was bringing businesses together.
He said that although Guyana is the new oil and gas investment hotspot many businesses were going to the United States to do transactions and find partners, and organizers wanted to “shift that to Guyana”.
“We have managed to do that by setting up an event that really had all of the biggest players, such as Darren Woods. He was on the ground here. In as far as we wanted to do that, we achieved that ‘B to B (business to business) in GT,’” Graham said.
He added that they also wanted to have businesses able to have access to government “on the ground in GT” and said the “B to G” (business to government) goal was achieved given the numerous meetings the president and his ministers and G-Invest had.
Small businesses were not left out, Graham said, since large businesses were given the opportunity to meet those who could not have otherwise afforded meetings in Houston or Washington DC.
“A very significant goal was the ‘B to small B.’ When all these ‘B to B’ are happening in Houston, you don’t get a chance to give the small businessman in Guyana the opportunity to peddle their goods and services to larger players in in the industry. Bringing the players to Georgetown gave that an opportunity to happen and for us that was a very very significant thing,” he added.
Previously, the United Kingdom-based Valiant Business Media Inc had organised the Guyana International Guyana Petroleum Exhibition (GIPEX).
Last year May, as Valiant Business Media prepared to host its third GIPEX, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo announced that government would not be participating, citing concerns about inadequate local content initiatives and accusing the organisers of ties to the opposition.
“Once this Valiant is organising it, we will not participate and I am making that very clear,” Jagdeo had told a press conference.
It was not the first time Jagdeo had expressed concern about the hosting of the forum as when he had been Leader of the Opposition he had condemned the then seeming lack of local participation and the exorbitant costs for display booths.
“I spoke about the company, Valiant, when we were in opposition. I believe it is connected to a few individuals. We don’t have a high regard for the company. I know a few well connected people in APNU that may be connected,” Jagdeo had said as he pointed out that Guyanese are well able to host and promote similar events and conferences.
In 2019, Jagdeo, then in opposition, had said that the PPP/C believes that the Guyana Office for Investment and the Department of Energy’s sponsorship of the second GIPEX was a waste of taxpayers’ dollars and the party was mulling protesting the event.
While the opposition was invited then, it did not protest the event. Jagdeo had been present at the venue but did not participate in any of the events or discussions held.
Like with all of the previous oil and gas conferences held here, local participants continued to bemoan what they saw as the high cost of participation. In-person attendee registration ranged from US$350 to US$1,000.
While there was an option to register and attend virtually, the cost ranged from US$150 to US$600. Exhibitors’ registration fees ranged from US$300 to US$5000.
