The earliest public disclosure on Guyana’s first confirmed oil ‘strike’ by ExxonMobil back in 2015, was, without question, one of the most significant pieces of public information to be disseminated to Guyanese in the country’s history. One makes this argument having regard to the impact which the disclosure has had, not just on our perception as a people insofar as our oil and gas ‘find’, but to set to one side the historic ‘banana republic’ perception with which we had been ‘sold’ about ourselves.
It also afforded us a significantly higher level of positive external reportage about Guyana that went well beyond the familiar of ethnic differences and dubious democratic credentials. Going further, it would be more than fair to say that our earliest ‘oil find’ created decidedly premature and exalted expectations regarding just what was in store for us arising out of our ‘oil find.’
