Speaker 1: Guyana, It's Glen again, tiktoking.
Speaker 2: I am on TikTok again, ticktak.
Speaker 1: I'm here to tickle you guys again.
Speaker 3: This is Glenn Law. He's the publisher of the newspaper
Speaker 3: Keana Wilberg works for Kitter News. He is not your
Speaker 3: average publisher. And I'm not just talking about his penchant
Speaker 3: for statement hats and snazzy shirts.
Speaker 4: A change my short. I had a while Toby off
Speaker 4: this man.
Speaker 3: If you watch Law's videos, you will be seeing him
Speaker 3: in different clothes, different shoes, and with glittering jewelry. But
Speaker 3: Law isn't just a larger than life character. He's also
Speaker 3: an influencer. He has more than twenty thousand followers on
Speaker 3: TikTok and he's a content machine. He puts out a
Speaker 3: video almost every day.
Speaker 1: Glen again, tiktoking.
Speaker 2: It's Friday, Glenn ticking you, but this time I'm taking
Speaker 2: you guys differently.
Speaker 3: Lots of his videos have over one hundred thousand views.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty big number in a country with fewer
Speaker 3: than eight hundred thousand residents. And Glenn Law hosts a
Speaker 3: show on YouTube that he broadcasts on Kit's radio station.
Speaker 3: A newspaper a radio show, a YouTube channel, tiktoks. It's
Speaker 3: kind of a lot, but it's all part of a strategy.
Speaker 3: Law doesn't just want to put information out into the world.
Speaker 3: He wants to reach the masses and he knows how
Speaker 3: to speak their language. Literally, it's a.
Speaker 5: Version of Patois called Kreoles, so it's English and we
Speaker 5: have our own lingo that's mixed into that.
Speaker 3: That's Keana Wilberg, the journalist from Lall's newspaper Kitter News
Speaker 3: that we heard from last time. She says most people
Speaker 3: in Guyana, and especially working class people, speak Creolis. We
Speaker 3: heard it a lot too, like when our taxi driver
Speaker 3: took us to get some typical Guyanese snacks on the
Speaker 3: way to the Kijer News office.
Speaker 6: It's hot. It's hot, very hot, too hot. No, it's
Speaker 6: ara much.
Speaker 3: You said you didn't need it.
Speaker 6: I don't eat I eat it one a mistake?
Speaker 7: That does that? Does it?
Speaker 6: Kind of does it? Kind of take me experience. They're
Speaker 6: going to explore an experience like that for no Miwanaka
Speaker 6: and peple not too hot.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if you caught that, but we were
Speaker 3: talking about eating some of Guyana's famously spicy peppers and
Speaker 3: our driver was speaking in rapid fire creoles.
Speaker 8: So we report the news and that's for.
Speaker 5: Middle class and then that is translated into a written
Speaker 5: column that we have called them boise and then mister
Speaker 5: Glenlow he would also use his platform to do an
Speaker 5: extended version of that.
Speaker 3: This strategy of speaking to people in a way they
Speaker 3: understand and relate to it makes a big difference, especially
Speaker 3: when you're talking about complicated, messy things like oil contracts.
Speaker 3: Remember the team at kit News was waiting for months
Speaker 3: for the government to release its contract with ExxonMobil. Finally
Speaker 3: at the end of twenty seventeen, they did December twenty eighth,
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. To be exact, Christmas is a very special
Speaker 3: moment for Guyanese and it's.
Speaker 8: A period that the government knows if it wants to
Speaker 8: rush anything that needs careful attention, they put it at Christmas,
Speaker 8: which is what they did.
Speaker 7: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yes, the classic news dump. Every government and corporation in
Speaker 3: the world knows this tactic. If you're releasing news you're
Speaker 3: not super proud of or that you suspect might have
Speaker 3: some backlash, you put it out on a Friday evening
Speaker 3: before a long weekend or during a big sporting event,
Speaker 3: or in the week between Christmas and New Year's but
Speaker 3: this wasn't just any news jump.
Speaker 9: Finally, the government said, okay, at six o'clock today, we're
Speaker 9: going to release the contract. So Eggxon decided to bowl
Speaker 9: a press conference just about two or three hours before that.
Speaker 3: That was the first press conference Exon had in Guyana,
Speaker 3: and they've hosted very few since then. But this contract
Speaker 3: was really complicated and full of legal eese, so Exon
Speaker 3: decided they would break it down for reporters and point
Speaker 3: them toward the most important bits helpful.
Speaker 9: It was in a boardroom at the Marriot Hotel, right,
Speaker 9: and my colleagues and I we left. Everyone is down
Speaker 9: serious and for the first time, because we normally don't
Speaker 9: like to share our angles, but this was the first
Speaker 9: time everybody was huddled together.
Speaker 3: Did you understand what.
Speaker 8: This guy was talking about? What is this?
Speaker 3: What did he mean by this? Did he really say this?
Speaker 9: And I'm talking about season journalists, journalists who've been in
Speaker 9: this game for like twenty thirty years, covering so much
Speaker 9: here and abroad, and they were confused. And my editor
Speaker 9: in chief, who was during the time, he was saying,
Speaker 9: you know, this is this is exactly what this press
Speaker 9: conference is intended to do.
Speaker 3: Remember, the contract still wasn't going to be released for
Speaker 3: another few hours, so everything Exon told these reporters at
Speaker 3: the press conference it was just like a heads up
Speaker 3: before anyone could actually read it, you know, just fyi.
Speaker 3: Then a few hours later, the government did release the
Speaker 3: contract and it was chaos.
Speaker 9: This is something that was hidden from media since nineteen
Speaker 9: ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety nine was the year Guyana first signed a
Speaker 3: contract with Exxon Mobile. Then it was revised in twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen after oil was discovered.
Speaker 9: No one saw this document. No one even knew what
Speaker 9: certain terms meant. Nobody didn't understand what what what is
Speaker 9: two percent royalty? What is fifty to fifty profit oil?
Speaker 9: What is profit oil? What is cost oil? And they're
Speaker 9: talking to us with all of these different terms, and
Speaker 9: the conversation just went over everybody's head.
Speaker 3: So the contract was unintelligible to anyone who hadn't spent
Speaker 3: years reading oil contracts. And to make things even more confusing,
Speaker 3: Exon had primed everyone with information. They wanted people to
Speaker 3: know parts of the contract. They wanted to point people's
Speaker 3: attention toward. No one could make heads or tails of
Speaker 3: it or tell what was really going on. In fact,
Speaker 3: it would take you years for local lawyers and international
Speaker 3: experts to wrap their heads around what exactly this contract
Speaker 3: laid out. As everyone did start to make their way
Speaker 3: through it, one by one, they came to the same conclusion.
Speaker 6: The majority of people, including the IMF, has gone on
Speaker 6: record as.
Speaker 10: Saying it was a very unfair deal for.
Speaker 11: The Vienna, a historically bad, profoundly bad contract that the
Speaker 11: government got with Exxon.
Speaker 3: It's a balance of power problem.
Speaker 7: Once the contract assigned, then one of Excellon's sort of
Speaker 7: playbooks is to refuse to renegotiate.
Speaker 3: That was head of the Transparency Institute of Guyana Frederick Collins,
Speaker 3: investigative journalist Antonio Juhas, and journalist Steve call who wrote
Speaker 3: about Excellent Mobile in his book Private Empire. One by one,
Speaker 3: environmental nonprofits, government corruption groups, and the International Monetary Fund
Speaker 3: came out saying this was a bad deal for Guyana.
Speaker 3: When I asked Exon about it, they sent me the
Speaker 3: following statement quote, our Guyana operation is in what's considered
Speaker 3: a frontier offshore exploration basin the terms of our petroleum
Speaker 3: agreement with the government of Guyana are common in the
Speaker 3: industry and competitive with other countries at a similar stage
Speaker 3: of resource discovery. But even some conservative pro oil voices
Speaker 3: have been pointing out major flaws in the contract, which
Speaker 3: begs the question is this oil boom actually gonna make
Speaker 3: Guyana rich? We'll get into it after this quick break.
Speaker 3: This is light, sweet crude, and I'm Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 5: Ladies and gentlemen, for a pleasure to welcome you to Georgetown, Guyana.
Speaker 4: Please remain seated with your seatbelt securely fastened until we
Speaker 4: are partipicate.
Speaker 11: If the Captain turns.
Speaker 9: Off the fast and seatbelt side, please love check.
Speaker 3: When we landed in Guyana, one thing was very apparent.
Speaker 3: Government officials were hesitant to talk to us. A few
Speaker 3: ministers and even the Vice President's scheduler had gotten back
Speaker 3: to us about the interviews, but then gone very very quiet.
Speaker 3: Then people kept asking us one question over and over.
Speaker 3: Had we seen the Vice News story on Guyana?
Speaker 11: Guyana is one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Speaker 3: Is the Chinese that are building this right?
Speaker 10: Yes?
Speaker 3: But these deals have come with claims of corruption. Do
Speaker 3: you accept bribes?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 12: I don't were a new reporters come from abroad.
Speaker 13: They always want to make a developing country leader look corrupt.
Speaker 3: In June twenty two, Vice News aired a damning piece
Speaker 3: on corruption in Guyana. Journalists went undercover, posing as a
Speaker 3: Chinese businessman who was interested in investing in the country
Speaker 3: and his secretary. They met with various Chinese businessmen who
Speaker 3: claimed to be middlemen for bribing government officials, particularly the
Speaker 3: Vice President Barat Jugdeo. One man in particular, mister Sue,
Speaker 3: claimed to have handled a deal between the oil company
Speaker 3: and Jack Dao. He took the undercover journalist to see
Speaker 3: the Vice president at his home as a way to
Speaker 3: show them that he did have this close relationship with him.
Speaker 3: Jagdeo never spoke of bribes, but he did say that
Speaker 3: he was good friends with mister Sue and could help
Speaker 3: their project from the government side.
Speaker 5: Can you understand how with Theo in detail, I'm.
Speaker 12: Not getting involved business, you will get his support.
Speaker 14: Sus my friend he at all his soon beans, with
Speaker 14: all it raiment.
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't I understand. I understand.
Speaker 10: The thing is that my thing is invoment. So you
Speaker 10: can either assist from.
Speaker 3: Goloments after that story came out, Jagdeo's sued mister Sue
Speaker 3: for defamation in Guyana. He claimed fifty million dollars in
Speaker 3: damages and he seems to have stopped talking to foreign
Speaker 3: journalists altogether, at least for a while. A lot of
Speaker 3: people look at the contract situation in Guyana and think
Speaker 3: it must be corruption. In fact, Jagdeo himself accused the
Speaker 3: previous government, the one that actually signed this contract, of corruption.
Speaker 3: Now those accusations are flying at him too, after being
Speaker 3: a vocal critic of the contract for years and promising
Speaker 3: to renegotiate it when his government resumed power. Now Jagdeo
Speaker 3: says renegotiation is not an option. He often repeats a
Speaker 3: phrase that Exon has used over and over, Santa Kiyev contract,
Speaker 3: Santa Ti of contract, sanctity of contract. Contract renegotiation has
Speaker 3: become a big issue in Guyana. Government officials are still
Speaker 3: answering questions about it years later, and Glenlaw is turning
Speaker 3: out hundreds of hours of video on the topic. To
Speaker 3: understand why, we're going to have to get into some
Speaker 3: of the details and spoiler alert, they are confusing as
Speaker 3: hell to recap. Guyana signed a contract with Exon Mobile
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety nine, allowing them to explore for oil,
Speaker 3: but Exon didn't really start exploring there until about a
Speaker 3: decade later, and then in twenty fifteen they struck oil,
Speaker 3: and a year later, in twenty sixteen, they inked a
Speaker 3: new contract with the government of Guyana. According to Exon,
Speaker 3: even though they had found oil, no one knew the
Speaker 3: full potential of Guyana's reserves at the time, but none
Speaker 3: of that was made public until December twenty seventeen, when
Speaker 3: Exeon held a press conference to explain the contract to
Speaker 3: journalists like Keana Wilberg.
Speaker 9: It's clear that they weren't exactly telling us lies, but
Speaker 9: they weren't telling us the truth.
Speaker 3: Eider. This practice using statements that are technically true but
Speaker 3: also leave out critical information in order to mislead people.
Speaker 3: It has a name paltering, and the fossil fuel industry
Speaker 3: uses it over and over again. John Cook is a
Speaker 3: climate communications researcher at Monash University in Australia and an
Speaker 3: advisor to Facebook on climate misinformation. He says paltering is
Speaker 3: a key tactic for the industry. He often points to
Speaker 3: the way fossil fuel companies talk about renewable energy as
Speaker 3: a text book example, the.
Speaker 7: Sun doesn't shine at night or the wind doesn't always fly,
Speaker 7: and therefore or renewables on a reliable source of energy.
Speaker 3: Of course, it's true that the wind doesn't always blow
Speaker 3: and that the sun doesn't shine at night, but this
Speaker 3: argument intentionally leaves out information about things like battery storage
Speaker 3: that address those issues. Exceon Mobile does the same thing
Speaker 3: in Guyana. In fact, the company uses a handful of
Speaker 3: classic disinformation tactics all the time, not just pultering, but
Speaker 3: also implying that any information not released by the company
Speaker 3: itself is inaccurate and something called building social license things
Speaker 3: like sponsoring sporting events or educational programs to convince the
Speaker 3: public that the company is a positive member of the community.
Speaker 3: These three tactics have been deployed over and over again
Speaker 3: in Guyana, not just at that initial press conference, but
Speaker 3: in a steady stream of marketing materials the company has
Speaker 3: released since then, like this promotional video they put out
Speaker 3: on Facebook to explain the contract to the Guyanese public.
Speaker 4: I'm Janelle Persad and I'm Mikaela Careron. So while development
Speaker 4: activities continue to progress at a rapid pace. There are
Speaker 4: still many of you out there who have questions, questions
Speaker 4: specifically about the production sharing agreement or the contract which
Speaker 4: was signed in twenty sixteen. And if you guys hadn't heard,
Speaker 4: Exon Mobil will once again be sponsoring the Guyana Amazon
Speaker 4: Warriors Cricket Cricket Lovely Titanti Cricket returns to Guyana.
Speaker 11: We could not be more excited.
Speaker 13: And that's why we're recording this episode from the Guyana
Speaker 13: National Stadium in Providence.
Speaker 3: That's not us editing the tape, that's the video as
Speaker 3: is going straight from oil to cricket without missing a beat.
Speaker 3: This is one of the ways Exon is building social
Speaker 3: license by associating cricket, Guyana's beloved national sport with Exon.
Speaker 3: These two young women, one of African descent the other
Speaker 3: of Indian descent, who appeal to as much of the
Speaker 3: Guyanese public as possible, all are filming from the national
Speaker 3: cricket field and highlighting Exxon's contributions to Guyanese society. I
Speaker 3: asked Glen Law, the publisher of Kitter News we heard
Speaker 3: from up top, what he thinks of the cricket sponsorship.
Speaker 15: I am so afraid, deep with in my soul, with
Speaker 15: what they're doing there. That is not only misleading, but
Speaker 15: it's very dangerous. I have said that on team times
Speaker 15: and I will repeat it tomorrow night on the radio.
Speaker 15: You see when they sponsor this cricket before I think
Speaker 15: two years ago, their sponsor cricket, and when you walk
Speaker 15: in the streets, you would hear every guy and saying
Speaker 15: doubt God for Eggson. It wasn't for Eggxon, we would
Speaker 15: have never been able to see cricket live on television.
Speaker 15: You see how dangerous that it.
Speaker 3: Oil companies, like all big industrial companies, work really hard
Speaker 3: to convince the public that they're doing more good than harm.
Speaker 3: They spend a lot of time and money on it.
Speaker 3: Social license. The public's willingness to give them the benefit
Speaker 3: of the doubt or support policies that the oil companies
Speaker 3: want is important to their business model. So when they
Speaker 3: do things like sponsoring sports teams and music festivals and schools,
Speaker 3: they're not just playing the good guy. They're not just
Speaker 3: doing it for pr They're also making entire communities dependent
Speaker 3: on their apparent generosity. Over time, it makes people less
Speaker 3: likely to criticize them. Because they feel totally beholden to them.
Speaker 3: Remember how the Exon promotional video promised to answer all
Speaker 3: of our questions about the contract well before getting into
Speaker 3: any of the actual details that they've promised. First they
Speaker 3: remind us that Exon is supporting cricket in a big way,
Speaker 3: and then they raise an eyebrow at what anyone else
Speaker 3: might be saying about this contract.
Speaker 13: Well, recognizing that there is a lot of incorrect information
Speaker 13: out there, we hope to provide clarity through our conversations
Speaker 13: with president of ix On Mobile Guyana, Alistair Routledge and
Speaker 13: our treasurer at Katrina Masses in this episode of Access
Speaker 13: Exon Mobile.
Speaker 3: And finally we get to the poultering. Here's Alistair Routledge,
Speaker 3: who heads up Exon's operations in Guyana.
Speaker 7: So fundamentally, this is a sharing production sharing agreement.
Speaker 3: This is the guy in charge of Exon in Guyana,
Speaker 3: Alistair Routledge.
Speaker 7: But in that sharing agreement, the contractors, which is Exomobile,
Speaker 7: Hes and Snook, take all of the risk up front.
Speaker 7: So if we never made an economic development, we would
Speaker 7: swallow all of the costs that went into that investment.
Speaker 7: We would never get paid back. So there's never any
Speaker 7: risk for the state.
Speaker 3: What Routledge is seeing is that Exon and its partners
Speaker 3: are investing money into the discovery and puduction of oil,
Speaker 3: and that's expensive. These are things like surveying the ocean
Speaker 3: floor to figure out where oil is and then drilling
Speaker 3: exploratory wells to see what kind of oil they can
Speaker 3: get there. And in Guyana they can get what's called
Speaker 3: light sweet crude, the best kind of oil. It's easier
Speaker 3: to turn into gasoline and it commands a higher price
Speaker 3: on the world market. So in Guyana they not only
Speaker 3: found oil, they found a lot of the most profitable kind.
Speaker 3: But then there are more expenses before that oil can
Speaker 3: be sold. Wales need to be built, staff hired, the
Speaker 3: oil needs to be refined and shipped. All of it
Speaker 3: costs billions and billions of dollars. Here's ex On Guyana's
Speaker 3: Vice president and business service manager, Philip Reyatima, explaining it
Speaker 3: all at a press conference.
Speaker 10: This is the first year since our inception in nineteen
Speaker 10: ninety nine that we've generated profit in Guyana, underscoring the
Speaker 10: complexity of our business and the years of investment required
Speaker 10: before payoff overall expenses. We're up from twenty twenty in
Speaker 10: line with increase in production.
Speaker 3: In other words, deep water offshore drilling projects take a
Speaker 3: lot of time and a lot of money before they
Speaker 3: start to pay off, and before anyone can start divvying
Speaker 3: up profits. The oil companies need to pay themselves back
Speaker 3: for all those years of investment. It's only fair. But
Speaker 3: there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First. Well, yes,
Speaker 3: Exxon has technically been in Guyana since nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 3: it only started actively looking for oil in two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, and Exon spokespeople leave out some other key
Speaker 3: details that make things a whole lot more blurry. Here's
Speaker 3: what you need to know first, before there's any profit
Speaker 3: to split. Exeon and its partners takes seventy five percent
Speaker 3: of all revenue off the top to pay themselves back
Speaker 3: for exploration and development costs, all those things that Routledge
Speaker 3: was talking about. So if you think about one hundred
Speaker 3: dollars barrel of oil, that's seventy five dollars to the
Speaker 3: oil company's straightaway. It's what the oil companies referred to
Speaker 3: as cost oil. The remaining twenty five dollars or profit
Speaker 3: oil gets split between Guyana and the oil companies with
Speaker 3: an extra two percent royalty coming to Guyana for a
Speaker 3: grand total of fourteen dollars and fifty cents a barrel.
Speaker 14: It may be ultimately over a long period of time
Speaker 14: of fifty to fifty split. Right now, it is not
Speaker 14: a fifty to fifty split right now, it's six to one.
Speaker 3: This is Tomsonzilo from the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics
Speaker 3: and Financial Analysis. He's looked at Guyana's oil contract closer
Speaker 3: than almost anybody.
Speaker 14: Right now, you're looking at a revenue take of somewhere
Speaker 14: between six dollars to the oil and gas companies to
Speaker 14: every one dollar to the government of Guyana.
Speaker 3: And just to put that royalty in perspective, that two
Speaker 3: percent that gets talked about as this like big extra
Speaker 3: tip for Guyana. The average range for royalties in situations
Speaker 3: like this is eight to twenty five percent, So two
Speaker 3: percent is quite a bit below the low end of
Speaker 3: that spectrum. It's not great. Plus, Guana's on the hook
Speaker 3: for a lot of other costs. It pays Exon's Guyanese
Speaker 3: income tax, for example, and it's had to get foreign
Speaker 3: loans to cover the cost of various infrastructure projects that
Speaker 3: need to be built to support the fossil fuel industry,
Speaker 3: like the export terminal in Georgetown that Exon needs to
Speaker 3: ship things in and out of. Second, you could look
Speaker 3: at the current split and say, okay, well, sure, but
Speaker 3: expenses are expenses, and once they're paid off, it will
Speaker 3: be fifty to fifty And again that's technically true, but
Speaker 3: as you heard from Ryet a moment ago, those expenses
Speaker 3: just keep growing. Here's where it starts to get really tricky.
Speaker 3: It's pretty normal for an oil company to recoup at
Speaker 3: least some of its development costs once a well starts
Speaker 3: generating revenue. What's not common is for them to build
Speaker 3: against what's called future oil, the oil that future well
Speaker 3: sites are projected to produce.
Speaker 14: All of Exxon's development costs are folded in as a
Speaker 14: part of the balance that's owed. They've developed a couple
Speaker 14: of existing wells where they're actually drawing oil, and that
Speaker 14: oil is producing revenue, and so they're getting money for that.
Speaker 14: But they now have also some twenty plus other fields
Speaker 14: that they have discovered that are not producing oil without
Speaker 14: the development costs get folded into the balance anyway. In
Speaker 14: other words, they're paying for future oil now.
Speaker 3: So Exon has two wells that are producing actual barrels
Speaker 3: of oil for sale. That's where all the profit is
Speaker 3: coming from right now. But on top of covering the
Speaker 3: expenses associated with those wells, they're recouping the expenses associated
Speaker 3: with all of their ongoing exploration and development in Guyana.
Speaker 3: See Excellon didn't stop exploring once they found that initial
Speaker 3: bit of oil. They've continued to survey and drill to
Speaker 3: look for more oil, and they're continuing to build new
Speaker 3: wells and production rigs too. All of that costs money,
Speaker 3: and normally those costs would be recouped once those new
Speaker 3: discoveries start producing sellable barrels of oil. But instead of
Speaker 3: waiting for that, Excellent and its partners are paying themselves
Speaker 3: back now with the profits from those first two wells.
Speaker 3: In other words, Guyana is paying today for well sites
Speaker 3: that may never turn a profit, and that's not generally
Speaker 3: how these projects work. Here's how investigative journalist Antonia Yuha
Speaker 3: Let's put it.
Speaker 11: It is unprecedented that Exxon is recouping all of its costs,
Speaker 11: all of its development costs, that the Guyanese people are
Speaker 11: subsidizing all of the development costs for Exon.
Speaker 3: Like Senzilo, Juhas, has read a lot of oil contracts.
Speaker 3: She's been digging into Guyana situation since twenty nineteen and
Speaker 3: has written about it for The Guardian and Wired, and
Speaker 3: she's written books on the way the oil industry operates
Speaker 3: in the Gulf of Mexico and also any rock in Guyana.
Speaker 3: You've got these two big issues. Seventy five percent of
Speaker 3: revenue comes off the top of every barrel to cover expenses,
Speaker 3: and Exon is front loading those expenses, which means Guyana
Speaker 3: is paying today for wells that may or may not
Speaker 3: pay off tomorrow. So far, those expenses are estimated at
Speaker 3: up to twenty nine billion dollars, which could take up
Speaker 3: to ten years to pay off. But to really understand
Speaker 3: the problem with this setup, you kind of have to
Speaker 3: understand the global oil market a bit too. It is,
Speaker 3: in a word, volatile. The past year has been very,
Speaker 3: very good to the industry, thanks in large part to
Speaker 3: Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Oil has fluctuated between eighty and
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty nine dollars a barrel, and oil
Speaker 3: companies have been pocketing record profits. But for years before that,
Speaker 3: oil prices were pretty regularly hitting record lows. Fifty dollars
Speaker 3: a barrel seemed kind of like the new normal. And
Speaker 3: then remember at the height of the COVID nineteen pandemic
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, oil prices actually went negative. In other words,
Speaker 3: to sell a barrel of oil, you would have to
Speaker 3: pay the person you are selling that barrel to money.
Speaker 3: That's because demand plummeted, but companies kept right on producing
Speaker 3: the same amount and there was nowhere to put it.
Speaker 3: There was no storage left. At one point, anyone selling
Speaker 3: a barrel of oil was having to pay the buyer
Speaker 3: thirty dollars.
Speaker 12: Oil prices have turned negative. The most extraordinary development that
Speaker 12: took place today when the US main blend West Texas
Speaker 12: Intermediate fell more than three hundred and six percent.
Speaker 3: Shutting down wells can be expensive and complicated, and then
Speaker 3: there's the risk that you won't be able to get
Speaker 3: them back up and running again when prices rise. So
Speaker 3: some oil companies just keep pumping even if they're losing money.
Speaker 3: Not exactly a rock solid investment. In fact, most forecasters
Speaker 3: predict prices will go down as the decade progresses, in
Speaker 3: part due to slowing demand as people and countries transition
Speaker 3: away from fossil fuels. So by the time those wells
Speaker 3: Guana is paying for today actually start to turn a profit,
Speaker 3: and by the time those profits are truly being split
Speaker 3: fit fifty, things are likely to look very different than
Speaker 3: they do today. That's why Glenn Mall is taking to
Speaker 3: TikTok every chance he gets to beat the drum for
Speaker 3: renegotiating the contract.
Speaker 1: Now tell me again.
Speaker 2: How or not that is a fifty to fifty profit
Speaker 2: sharing business. Huh when one side is huffing out trick
Speaker 2: quarter barrel up front, I'm calling it cost oil. Guyana
Speaker 2: cannot say definitively to this country what percentage of revenue
Speaker 2: the Guyanese people are receiving from our oil deal.
Speaker 1: The contract was not made freely, knowingly and fairly by
Speaker 1: compretent people. And our hands are not handcuffed. We are
Speaker 1: not chained to a concrete posts. So what is stopping
Speaker 1: us from changing it?
Speaker 3: Calls to renegotiate the contract have gotten enough support that
Speaker 3: Exon is starting to spend some of its marketing budget
Speaker 3: to counteract the idea that Guyana has a bad deal.
Speaker 3: It made that promotional video I mentioned earlier, for example,
Speaker 3: and it's been putting up massive billboards all over Guyana
Speaker 3: about the fifty to fifty split, But not everyone agrees
Speaker 3: with law about the need to renegotiate. Some people say
Speaker 3: he's just mad that he's not getting rich off the oil.
Speaker 3: Others buy Exon's argument that it's only fair for the
Speaker 3: company to recoup its costs in this way. But another
Speaker 3: small but growing group of people thinks haggling over the
Speaker 3: details of the contract is a fool's errand that Guyana
Speaker 3: needs to look past the contract, past the promises of
Speaker 3: oil riches, and really grapple with the harm that this
Speaker 3: project could do in Guyana, and beyond the fact that
Speaker 3: there are all these expenses to pay up front and
Speaker 3: that it could be a long time before a true
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty split kicks in. Creates a huge incentive
Speaker 3: for Guyana to fast track oil production. The more barrels
Speaker 3: they can produce, and the faster they can produce them,
Speaker 3: the faster they can pay off those expenses and get
Speaker 3: to that oil wealth that the public has been promised,
Speaker 3: and fast treking appears to be exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 3: Routledge himself regularly comments on how everything in Guyana is
Speaker 3: happening ahead of schedule at an unprecedented pace.
Speaker 7: Really just six years, less than six years that we've
Speaker 7: been exploring offshore Guyana to achieve that amound is quite outstanding.
Speaker 3: Well excellent.
Speaker 11: Just repeats every chance it gets that everything about this
Speaker 11: production has been ahead of schedule and way faster than
Speaker 11: its other operations. It says this as a point of pride.
Speaker 3: That's investigative journalist Antonia Juhas.
Speaker 11: Again, this is a point of concern that why is
Speaker 11: it so much faster than everywhere else. Exon has been
Speaker 11: producing oil over one hundred and fifty years. Why is
Speaker 11: it suddenly you receive this ability to move so much
Speaker 11: faster in Guyana than it does everywhere else in the world.
Speaker 11: And the answer is really simple. There's no oversight, there's
Speaker 11: no one telling them to slow down, be careful, follow
Speaker 11: the rules. It's one of the reasons why it's so
Speaker 11: cheap for Exon to produce there, and it's why Exon
Speaker 11: is pushing so much of its production there.
Speaker 3: At the end of twenty twenty two, Exon announced that
Speaker 3: its first two wells in Guyana we're producing above design capacity,
Speaker 3: so pumping out more barrels than they were designed to produce.
Speaker 3: If it stays on its current production schedule, Guyana will
Speaker 3: be neck and neck with Exon's longtime stronghold, the Permium
Speaker 3: Basin in Texas within five years.
Speaker 11: That is a shocking development for a country that didn't
Speaker 11: have any oil production three years ago.
Speaker 3: It's actually another example of paltering too. Exon boasts to
Speaker 3: its shareholders and the public about the remarkable speed with
Speaker 3: which it is developing an oil industry in Guyana, but
Speaker 3: in reality, that speed is a major red flag because
Speaker 3: while it's true that rapidly increasing production can increase profits
Speaker 3: in the short term, there's another thing that's even more
Speaker 3: common when oil companies fast track things.
Speaker 16: The gusher unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico continues to
Speaker 16: spew crude oil. There are no reliable estimates of how
Speaker 16: much oil is pouring into the gulf, but it comes
Speaker 16: to many millions of gallons. Since the catastrophic blew out in.
Speaker 11: The US golf, you did have one hundred and fifty
Speaker 11: years of experience, you do have some of the best
Speaker 11: regulations in the world, and though limited, you do still
Speaker 11: have some of the best oversight capacity in the world. Again,
Speaker 11: though limited and still the worst offshore drilling oil disaster
Speaker 11: in history took place in the US Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 11: under these circumstances, and there is tremendous concern both by
Speaker 11: experts and by everybody I talked to in Guyana about
Speaker 11: what would happen if there was a disaster in the
Speaker 11: deep waters offshore Guyana.
Speaker 3: That's our story next time. Late Sweet Crude is a
Speaker 3: Drilled and Damage's co production. Both shows are Critical Frequency originals.
Speaker 3: Our editor and senior producer is Sarah Ventry. Sound design,
Speaker 3: mixing and mastering by Martin Saltz Austwick, Our fact checker
Speaker 3: is Anna Prugel Mazzini, and our first amendment attorney is
Speaker 3: James Wheaton. The show is reported and written by me
Speaker 3: Amy Westerveldt, additional reporting by Keana Wilberg in Guyana and
Speaker 3: Antonio Juhas in DC. We had additional assistance in Guyana
Speaker 3: from Jamal Thomas Salvadorda, Carrie's Wilderness Explorers, and the staff
Speaker 3: at Kaiman House. Special thanks to Michael McCrystal for his
Speaker 3: help as well. Our theme song is Bird in the
Speaker 3: Hand by Foreknown. The cover of The Godfather Love theme
Speaker 3: is by Young Ones of Guyana and licensed from bb Music.
Speaker 3: Sing a Simple Song was originally written by Sly and
Speaker 3: the Family Stone. It's performed in this episode by the
Speaker 3: Young Ones of Guyana, licensed by b a ME Music.
Speaker 3: Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. Marketing is handled by
Speaker 3: the Great Maggie Taylor PR and media outreach by the
Speaker 3: wonderful folks at Tink Media Lauren Passel, Ariel Nissenblatt and
Speaker 3: Devin Andrade. The show is supported in part by generous
Speaker 3: grants from the Doc Society File Foundation, the William Collins
Speaker 3: Kohler Foundation, and you