About 87 per cent of Guyana is rainforest (Image: Getty)
A small part of the Commonwealth that is close to being 90 per cent rainforest is growing faster than any other economy after the discovery of one of the biggest offshore crude reserves in decades.
Guyana was one of the poorest nations in Latin America until the discovery in 2015, bit is now set to be labelled the globe’s fastest growing economy for the fifth year in a row.
In 2008 when Esso, part of Exxon Mobil, started exploring the off-shore areas off Guyana, it was one of the poorest per capita in South America.
It took the multinational until 2015 to announce the discovery of more than 90 metres of high-quality, oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs about 120 miles off its the coastline.
This was one of the biggest crude oil finds of the last few decades.
Now, the oil drilling areas cover 16,650 square miles containing at the outset an estimated billions of oil barrels.
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An oil rig in the reserves off Guyana (Image: Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement)
Since the discovery and becoming an oil producer, the economy of Guyana has ballooned and was the fastest growing in the world for the last four years.
The small nation of 133,000 square miles, bordering Brazil, Suriname, Venezuela and the North Atlantic Ocean, is now producing about 650,000 oil barrels a day and rising, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate of 34 per cent.
Guyana’s government has vowed to use its new found wealth to invest in the country to vastly improve its infrastructure with roads, schools and hospitals.
There are questions over where this will be due its interior of mountains, savannas, and vast rainforest areas.
The rainforest areas host about four per cent of all known animal species, including Amazonian species like jaguars, giant river otters, harpy eagles, tapirs, giant anteaters, and giant armadillos.
Nine indigenous tribes still reside in various parts of the country.
Guyana borders the North Atlantic (Image: Getty)
It was dominated by the Lokono and Kalina tribes, until it was colonised by the Dutch, later coming under British control in the late 18th century.
This last until the 1950s and it gained independence in 1966, becoming a Commonwealth republic in 1970, with English remaining its official language.
In 2017, more than 40 per cent of the population were below the poverty line, but after the oil discovery, the economy grew by 49 per cent in 2020.
It is estimated it will become one of the largest per capita oil producers in the world by 2025.
As a result, there are fears it could succumb to a “resource curse” which has historically hit developing nations suddenly hit by wealth from the discovery of a natural resource.
It can lead to corruption, as leaders syphon off the wealth, authoritarianism and even slow economic growth as seen in Venezuela.
Guyana has already created a “sovereign wealth fund” and promised to invest all its oil profits in public interest developments for the good of the people.
But, there are already questions being raised over the transparency of the fund and who will benefit.
And Guyana’s traditional fishing industry has been hit negatively with claims the drilling and vibrations from oil extraction are depleting stocks with catches diminishing.
But, drilling is set to intensify as, in March this year, Exxon Mobil disclosed a new oil and gas discovery in the same offshore area, making more than 30 discoveries since 2015.
A month later, jouyrnalist Stephen Sackur, host of BBC HARDTalk, visited Smith Creek, in Guyana’s far northwest borderland with Venezuela, to investigate if the new found wealth will benefit the poorest people.
He found about 300 people living in a collection of dilapidated cabins perched precariously on wooden stilts and using traditional canoes carved from tree trunks to get around.
He said: “In Smith Creek it is hard to believe Guyana can lay claim to being the world’s fastest growing economy.
“No sign here that the country has become a premier-league petrostate. Eleven billion barrels of oil lie in the Stabroek Block subsea reserve off Guyana’s coast, but fossil fuel riches are not yet flowing to the people of Smith Creek.
“Instead they eke out a living as best they can. Fishing, farming, relying on the remittances of family members who go to work in the gold mines far to the south.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-14 19:59:00
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