Miami Herald foreign affairs columnist Andrés Oppenheimer has said that the Biden Administration should be looking to Guyana to help it ease burgeoning fuel prices and not Venezuela.
In a March 23rd piece for the newspaper, Oppenheimer noted that Biden had recently sent a team of senior US officials to Caracas for talks with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro about a possible oil deal to help bring down gas prices in America.
He opined that Biden should instead be sending his envoys to Guyana as it could become a much more promising US oil supplier.
The Argentina-born columnist noted that recent oil discoveries here are expected to turn Guyana into one of Latin America’s biggest oil producers over the next five years.
“But, incredibly, the U.S. government seems to be blocking Guyana — a democracy — from developing its recently discovered oil fields instead of helping it”, he said, referring to recent reportage in this newspaper about Washington vetoing a loan by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) to a private sector company here which is expanding its oil and gas shore base.
Citing ExxonMobil figures, Oppenheimer noted that Guyana is projected to produce 350,000 barrels of oil a day by mid-May and that production is further projected to rise to 800,000 barrels a day in 2025, and to 1.2 million barrels a day by 2027. He said that by comparison, Venezuela’s oil production has slid to 800,000 barrels a day and it could take five years and a huge sum in new investments for it to start rising significantly based on what energy experts have said.
The columnist pointed out that Guyana is projected to become the world’s top per capita oil producer by 2035, according to the Americas Market Intelligence research firm.
Despite this potential, Oppenheimer adverted to Stabroek News reportage that the Biden administration in October last year denied a Guyanese company a US$180 million IADB loan to further expand its oil and gas shore base. He noted that Stabroek News had reported that the U.S. delegate to the IADB had vetoed the lending project after a two-year application process, citing new U.S. environmental regulations banning new loans for fossil-fuel production.
He adverted to the newspaper’s report that Robert Albiez, the chief financial officer of the Guyana Shore Base Inc. (GYSBI) had said that the Biden administration had blocked new loans for oil production not only at the IADB, but also at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Oppenheimer said that officials close to the IADB negotiations say Guyana’s oil-production plans with U.S.-backed loans were conditional on the country adopting relatively high environmental standards.
“By comparison, Venezuela’s current oil industry is an environmental disaster. They also say that if the United States doesn’t support Guyana’s booming oil industry, China will become the biggest economic player in the country. That could weaken Guyana’s democratic institutions and potentially lead to a new petro-dictatorship, they say”, Oppenheimer stated.
A Chinese company already has a 25% stake in the lucrative Stabroek Block offshore and state-owned Chinese companies are heavily present in the construction sector.
Oppenheimer said that IADB President Mauricio Claver-Carone declined to comment on the specifics of the bank’s loan negotiations with the Guyanese company.
“But he told me that, `Guyana’s energy sector can be an important opportunity for U.S. trade to help offset oil imports from Russia in the future, while developing sustainably to meet global climate goals’”, Oppenheimer reported.
Oppenheimer said that he is still skeptical that after the political backlash that followed the Biden administration’s exploratory talks with Maduro on March 5 that there will be any U.S.-Venezuela oil deal in the near future.
“But if world oil prices continue to rise because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Biden decides to lift oil sanctions on Venezuelan oil imports, he would be making a major mistake. It would send a message to Maduro and all other petro-dictators that, if they just hang on to power long enough, the United States and other Western democracies eventually will come begging for their oil. If Biden is considering sending his team of negotiators back to Venezuela for a new round of talks, he should order them to change their airline tickets right away, and have them fly to Guyana”, the columnist asserted.
