The chorus of Guyanese objecting to oil and gas production based on environmental concerns is growing. It is very much part of the narrative over climate change that is dominating the global zeitgeist.
What is of interest is the recent “concern” for climate change coming from Wall St and other financial centres. It was a phenomenon Wood Mackenzie’s Ed Crooks noted in a column: “Capital… is a social power,” wrote Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party….When controllers of capital exercise their influence, they can have a big impact on the economy and on society, as the oil and gas industry has found.”
But this concern by hedge funds and large investors in energy companies is coming from a very different place than that of climate activists such as Greta Thunberg whose arguments are based on saving the planet. The former want to see the fossil fuel companies preserve value and profits by navigating and adapting to the impending energy transition.
From Wall St to Water St
In Guyana the environmental movement is still small but as we saw with issues such as parking meters and taxes on private school fees, many of the individuals carry outsized influence, with access to the media, a power to decide what is important and an ability to effectively communicate ideas and arguments. (To quote Marx and Engels again: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”) And in Guyana environmental concerns are being used in part to open another front on the ExxonMobil 2016 Contract and the perception of it being economically exploitative and in need of renegotiation. The contract is also serving its continued purpose of being a tool to attack the government of the day for its handling of the sector. Never mind that the Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat declared in Parliament yesterday that the PSA is “probably one of the worst agreements in the history of this world”. For its part the opposition has pivoted subtly and appears to now be raising objections to the sector based on environmental concerns such as flaring and the destruction of mangroves. We can expect more of this.
Meanwhile civil society groups such as Transparency International Guyana Inc, Fair Deal for Guyana, the Guyana Human Rights Association and the youth-based Policy Forum Guyana are now coalescing around the court case recently filed by Troy Thomas and Qadad de Freitas that the government, by authorising fossil fuel production, is in violation of Article 149(j) (Everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to his or her health or well-being.) Many of the arguments were repeated in a document signed by one hundred activists (including an auto dealer) , that was sent this week to the EPA questioning aspects of the Yellowtail development.
Where’s Erin Brokovich?
Thomas laid out some parts of the court case at the Guyana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative conference explaining that among the declarations being sought was for the government to refrain from authorising activities that would contribute significantly to climate change, and that any modification of the environmental legislation to accommodate such activity would violate the state’s duty under the constitution.
Is there a place for oil and gas activity in Guyana? Thomas was asked. “What interests me is the preservation of the environment,” he replied but added that perhaps there is a justification for certain economic development as long as there is still something you are doing to rectify the damage you might do.
President of TIGI Fred Collins also spoke to the forum and while his arguments were obviously about transparency he did refer to the court case and quoted the figure of 3.87 Gigatons of emissions that activity in the block is projected to emit.
He also criticized the decision by the EPA to approve the Houston Schlumberger project without an EIA which he said smacked of political interference. And he warned that with the radioactive material on site, residents could face getting sick, likening a scenario to the contamination by Pacific Gas and Electric in Hinkley, California. He also said that TIGI had yet to accept whether it was better to leave the oil under the seabed. The organisation was still looking at the financial benefits and how they outweigh their perception of the environmental and socio economic risks.
Lawyering up
The court case is similar to the one filed in Holland that saw a judge order oil major Shell to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030 as part of meeting obligations under the Paris Agreement. How the Guyana case may play out is hard to assess but any judge would be hard pressed to understand the science behind climate change and evaluate the plethora of statistics. The narrative tide at the moment means any number can be thrown out of what might happen to the planet, and it can often be an exercise in futility to dispute such hypotheticals. One can imagine both sides lawyering up big time. Whatever the initial outcome (and we lean to the case failing) it will most likely head to the Caribbean Court of Justice where justices might not weigh factors such as human and economic development over preserving the environment.
However, that might be several years down the road and by then the influence a newly wealthy Guyana and Suriname might have within Caricom could change the equation. In the interim, external and internal forces, including the recent flooding, are serving to give local environmentalists’ arguments legs.