Speaker 1: Just opened up my book started reading the first sentence
Speaker 1: in the paragraph. When I heard what sounded like freight
Speaker 1: train coming through my bedroom. I jumped out of the bed.
Speaker 1: And then there was a pumping sound that consecutively got
Speaker 1: much faster, and with each thumb I felt the rig
Speaker 1: actually shape, and there was an initial booms.
Speaker 2: The lights went out, and there was a huge explosion.
Speaker 2: This is a clip from National Geographics documentary about the
Speaker 2: deep Water Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There
Speaker 2: are dozens of documentaries like this about the disaster, and
Speaker 2: even in future films starring Mark Wahlberg.
Speaker 1: No, that is a genuine dinosaur tooth gonna flip out,
Speaker 1: good man, Mike, are you seeing this?
Speaker 2: They all say the same thing.
Speaker 3: The destruction of the deep Water Horizon had been building
Speaker 3: for weeks in a series of mishaps.
Speaker 2: They pledged repeatedly to run a safer operation, yet they continue.
Speaker 3: To cut costs. The tension in every drilling operation is
Speaker 3: between doing things safely and doing them fast.
Speaker 2: You'd hope that the whole industry, all of the oil companies,
Speaker 2: would have learned from these mistakes. But now a lot
Speaker 2: of experts think Diana is following in some of the
Speaker 2: exact same footsteps.
Speaker 3: They're facing the long term risks of a blowout or
Speaker 3: a catastrophic Still.
Speaker 1: Now it's clear that they are running the operations at
Speaker 1: greater capacity levels than was designed.
Speaker 4: A lot of the right words that Exxon had written down,
Speaker 4: but just no depth to it, no details on the
Speaker 4: security provisions that needed to be in place to prevent
Speaker 4: a disaster.
Speaker 2: One reason this is all so incredibly disturbing is that
Speaker 2: the Deepwater Horizon disaster in twenty ten was one of
Speaker 2: the most catastrophic oil spills in history, and yet it
Speaker 2: happened under BP, one of the world's largest oil companies,
Speaker 2: in the Gulf of Mexico, an area that's been producing
Speaker 2: oil for almost a century and has some of the
Speaker 2: world's best regulations and industry oversight. In other words, in
Speaker 2: the best case scenario, we had one of the worst
Speaker 2: spills in history. There are two things that make deep
Speaker 2: water offshore drilling projects especially risky. The first is that
Speaker 2: when you're drilling in more than five thousand feet of water,
Speaker 2: there's about an elephant's worth of pressure bearing down on
Speaker 2: every square inch of your equipment, So the chances of
Speaker 2: a screw loosening or a part breaking are really high.
Speaker 2: The second is that almost every time you drill for oil,
Speaker 2: you get gas as well. The two tend to hang
Speaker 2: out together, and that gas needs to be managed because
Speaker 2: if it comes rushing to the surface and finds a spark,
Speaker 2: which there are many on an oil rig, things can
Speaker 2: go boom. That's a big part of what happened with
Speaker 2: the explosion of the deep Water Horizon rig, and it
Speaker 2: turns out there are a lot of similarities between what
Speaker 2: happened in the Gulf then and what's happening in Guyana now.
Speaker 2: In both cases, oil companies decided to continue production despite
Speaker 2: known issues with equipment. In Guyana, excell On hot a
Speaker 2: problem early the first production rigs gas compressor was faulty.
Speaker 2: That's part of the reason that instead of reinjecting the
Speaker 2: gas underground as they had planned, they started burning it
Speaker 2: off or flaring it. They sent it off to be fixed,
Speaker 2: but it didn't work, so they set it off again,
Speaker 2: and again it didn't work, so they redesigned it, and
Speaker 2: Exon says that its redesigned gas compressor was fully functional
Speaker 2: as of the end of twenty twenty two and that
Speaker 2: it is taking safety and maintenance seriously in Guyana. But
Speaker 2: the company is also proudly talking about how they've managed
Speaker 2: to fast track everything in this project. Remember, they say
Speaker 2: their existing wells are producing above design capacity, meaning more
Speaker 2: than they're designed to produce. And unlike the Gulf region,
Speaker 2: Guyana is really new to the oil business. That includes
Speaker 2: regulating the industry too.
Speaker 4: The government has admitted that it doesn't have yet the
Speaker 4: full capacity to do deepwater regulation, and people who are
Speaker 4: former government officials who I interviewed were very clear that
Speaker 4: it lacks anything close to the regulatory capacity to oversee
Speaker 4: deepwater drilling.
Speaker 2: A high risk project with little oversight fast tracking production,
Speaker 2: what could go wrong? The thing is, even though it
Speaker 2: seems like fast tracking oil production would bring the money
Speaker 2: in sooner, it actually kind of puts the whole endeavor
Speaker 2: at risk before it has a chance to make Guyana rich.
Speaker 2: The World Bank said this publicly in twenty nineteen. They
Speaker 2: gave the Guyanese government twenty million dollars to create an
Speaker 2: agency that would regulate the oil and gas industry to
Speaker 2: try and prevent these kinds of really risky moves, But
Speaker 2: so far that hasn't happened. And S and P Global
Speaker 2: even said that Guyana is quote only a corruption scandal
Speaker 2: or environmental accident away from total disaster on the oil front.
Speaker 2: So it's starting to seem more likely that Guyana will
Speaker 2: have a massive oil disaster than a massive payday. If
Speaker 2: a blowout were to happen on any of Guyana's offshore wells,
Speaker 2: the cost to its communities and industries would be astronomical.
Speaker 2: Remember when Excellon's president and Guyana Alistair Routledge talked about
Speaker 2: how the oil companies had taken on all the.
Speaker 5: Risk excell Mobile has and see, you take all of
Speaker 5: the risk up front, so if we never made an
Speaker 5: economic development, we would swallow all of the costs that
Speaker 5: went into that investment.
Speaker 2: Well, now that risk has transferred entirely to Guyana, that is,
Speaker 2: unless one scrappy Guyanese lawyer gets her way in court.
Speaker 6: The oil companies are the same the world over. They
Speaker 6: want to make money and that's all they are interested in,
Speaker 6: and you have to find some way to show them
Speaker 6: that actually they can't do it because there are rules,
Speaker 6: or there are there is something else that will stop them.
Speaker 6: But the something else that would stop them is not morality.
Speaker 6: It's not the Germond it's not. Oh it's a bad
Speaker 6: deal for us. You should give us more. Oh it's
Speaker 6: an abusive deal. Oh it's an exploitative deal. The more
Speaker 6: abusive and exploitative the deal is, the more money they make.
Speaker 2: This is Melinda Jenkie and she has another idea for that,
Speaker 2: something else. This is light, sweet crude, and I'm Amy Westerveld.
Speaker 2: Stay with us.
Speaker 7: On the light that we go in.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that metallic sound is her take. Oh my god,
Speaker 8: the metal tank.
Speaker 6: I just need to I'm in the middle of.
Speaker 2: Melinda Jankie works in a home office right next to
Speaker 2: the pen her rescue dogs stay in when strangers like
Speaker 2: me are visiting her. She lives in a bustling residential
Speaker 2: neighborhood full of family homes. It's easy to miss Jankie's
Speaker 2: house because it's set back from the street, hidden by
Speaker 2: trees that are filled with birds.
Speaker 6: And I think everyone should be able to wake up
Speaker 6: in the morning and there's just something very beautiful in
Speaker 6: front of them, flowers and birds and the sound of
Speaker 6: the birds, birds song.
Speaker 2: Even in the middle of the flowers and the birds
Speaker 2: and the dogs, Janki is always working on a zillion
Speaker 2: things at once.
Speaker 6: Well, here we are in my office, which is as
Speaker 6: you can see, full of books, full of papers. This
Speaker 6: is really where I do most of my work.
Speaker 2: She was sitting at her desk under a life sized
Speaker 2: painting of a yellow jaguar, which seems very apt. Jenki
Speaker 2: is not a large woman, and she doesn't speak loudly,
Speaker 2: but there's a quiet rage about her.
Speaker 6: But it's not necessarily where I do my thinking, because
Speaker 6: thinking and work are not always the same thing. I
Speaker 6: do a lot of my thinking with my trees and
Speaker 6: my plants. I do a lot of my thinking with
Speaker 6: the stars at night.
Speaker 2: Nature is what has drawn Jenkie back to Guyana over
Speaker 2: and over again. She grew up in a neighborhood Georgetown
Speaker 2: called Sabriyanville, near the ocean.
Speaker 6: And so every night for the first few years of
Speaker 6: my life, I went to bed with the sound of
Speaker 6: the sea in my ear, and Sabrineville was very quiet.
Speaker 6: We lived with our neighbors basically, so all the children
Speaker 6: were in all the houses all of the time. And
Speaker 6: I would say I was obviously brought up by my
Speaker 6: mother and father, but I was also brought up by
Speaker 6: all the other parents in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: By the time Jankie was twelve. Guyana had descended into
Speaker 2: constant unrest. There were politically motivated killings, riots in the streets,
Speaker 2: The economy was unstable and it seemed like an unsafe
Speaker 2: place to raise kids, so her parents made the tough
Speaker 2: decision to leave. They moved the family first to Zambia,
Speaker 2: then to Trinidad, and eventually Jankie went to the UK
Speaker 2: to study law at Oxford University. Loads of Guyanese people
Speaker 2: leave the country to study in the US or the UK.
Speaker 2: Brain drain is something government officials are constantly trying to
Speaker 2: get on top of, and so many people mentioned it
Speaker 2: to us. In fact, only about fifty percent of Guyanese
Speaker 2: people actually live in Guyana, and in the vast majority
Speaker 2: of cases, once people leave, they don't come back. After
Speaker 2: Jankie finished at Oxford, she got hired at one of
Speaker 2: the top corporate law firms in London. It was about
Speaker 2: as far away as you could get from waking up
Speaker 2: to the birds and falling asleep to the sound of
Speaker 2: the ocean. After a few years, she was ready for
Speaker 2: something new.
Speaker 6: And at the time it seemed like BP was a
Speaker 6: good place to go.
Speaker 2: Yes, BP that BP as in one of the largest
Speaker 2: oil companies in the world. The company that was overseeing
Speaker 2: the deep water horizon drilling, JANKI negotiated for them throughout Europe.
Speaker 6: The work was It's very interesting. I had far more
Speaker 6: responsibility than I would have had if I'd stayed in
Speaker 6: the law firm. I met some very interesting people, and
Speaker 6: I traveled. And you know, when you're young, the idea
Speaker 6: of seeing the world is very attractive. You want to
Speaker 6: go to other places, you want to meet other people,
Speaker 6: you want to experience other cultures, and you just want
Speaker 6: to learn.
Speaker 2: But at a certain point she just couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 6: I was in a meeting and one of the people
Speaker 6: at the table turned to me and he said, Oh,
Speaker 6: this is such sexy work. And I thought to myself,
Speaker 6: you know, this is really time to leave.
Speaker 2: It wasn't so much the work she was tired of,
Speaker 2: as the context She missed being surrounded by nature. She
Speaker 2: was also getting pretty tired of having to prove to
Speaker 2: white Europeans that she, a brown woman from the global South,
Speaker 2: knew what she was talking about. She had a standing
Speaker 2: offer to work as a partner in a prestigious corporate
Speaker 2: firm in Guyana, so she went for it. She'd be
Speaker 2: doing roughly the same sort of commercial work that she'd
Speaker 2: been doing, but in a place she loved and on
Speaker 2: her own terms.
Speaker 6: You know, sometimes when I look out of the window,
Speaker 6: there's a hummingbird there, and that's very beautiful, and I
Speaker 6: don't want to wake up to an alarm clock, and
Speaker 6: I have not woken up to alarm clock for decades.
Speaker 2: It was during these years that these two very different
Speaker 2: parts of Janki's life, her childhood in Guyana, growing up
Speaker 2: surrounded by unloving nature, and her career in London negotiating
Speaker 2: for a BP, came together into a whole new chapter.
Speaker 6: Well, I think when you grew up with nature, then
Speaker 6: you have a relationship with the world around you, and
Speaker 6: then if you're a lawyer, you sort of at some
Speaker 6: point I suppose the to connect. And I wanted to
Speaker 6: protect Guyana's environment. I wanted to protect the nature that
Speaker 6: I grew up with and that I think everybody should
Speaker 6: have a chance to grow up with.
Speaker 2: And because Guyana is quite a small country, with just
Speaker 2: under eight hundred thousand residents, she was able to get
Speaker 2: involved in protecting its environment in a very real way.
Speaker 6: There was a meeting at the Pegasus hotel. I wanted
Speaker 6: to go, but I had no way to go to
Speaker 6: the meeting because I was just this completely unimportant individual.
Speaker 2: The meeting was focused on environmental regulation and it was
Speaker 2: by invitation only. Jenkie was able to score an invite
Speaker 2: through a friend, so.
Speaker 6: I went and it was interminably boring. But in the
Speaker 6: break I was able to talk to one of the
Speaker 6: government officials and say to him that I had looked
Speaker 6: at their draft Environmental Act and I thought that it
Speaker 6: was inadequate.
Speaker 2: This is the sort of thing that makes people either
Speaker 2: love or hate Melinda Jankie. She says exactly what she
Speaker 2: thinks in every situation, but especially when she cares deeply
Speaker 2: about something. This time she was talking about the need
Speaker 2: to build in real safeguards for Guyana's valuable ecosystems. The
Speaker 2: country has been through phase after phase of what economists
Speaker 2: call the resource curse. It happens when a less developed
Speaker 2: country puts all of its focus on the economic benefit
Speaker 2: attached to selling a particular resource like gold or diamonds
Speaker 2: or oil. But instead of untold riches, what those countries
Speaker 2: generally get is an unstable economy that lives or dies
Speaker 2: by the price of whatever commodity they're now dependent on selling.
Speaker 2: Janki figured if the government was going to go to
Speaker 2: the trouble of writing a new environmental production Act, it
Speaker 2: should have some teeth, and so at the Pegasus Hotel
Speaker 2: in the mid nineties, she said just that to a
Speaker 2: government official and it actually paid off.
Speaker 6: He didn't brush me off. He said, oh, well, send
Speaker 6: me something about it. So I wrote a paper explaining
Speaker 6: why I thought this act was inadequate. The next thing
Speaker 6: I knew was they asked me if I'd like to
Speaker 6: actually work on this as a consultant, and so I
Speaker 6: said yes, and I was hired.
Speaker 2: Jenki's input transformed the proposed regulation from one that sounded
Speaker 2: okam paper but really didn't do much, to one of
Speaker 2: the most rigorous pieces of environmental legislation, not just in
Speaker 2: the region but in the world. Companies that wanted to
Speaker 2: tap Diana's resources would have to undertake serious environmental and
Speaker 2: climate impact assessments. And this was about three years or
Speaker 2: so before the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, which means climate
Speaker 2: impact assessments were not a thing that a lot of
Speaker 2: countries were really doing at the time. Jankie also wrote
Speaker 2: in requirements for comprehensive environmental management. She introduced the idea
Speaker 2: of natural capital and the need to protect it. Natural
Speaker 2: capital is the monetary value of all the things that
Speaker 2: a healthy ecosystem does for us, like keeping our air
Speaker 2: and drinking water clean, or storing carbon to curb climate change.
Speaker 2: Jankie insisted that the government protect that value. It's an
Speaker 2: incredibly progressive piece of environmental regulation, even by today's standards,
Speaker 2: never mind back in the mid nineties. That work also
Speaker 2: earned Jankie a lot of credibility in the realm of
Speaker 2: environmental law, so much so that when the government was
Speaker 2: drafting a new constitution a few years later, Jankie had
Speaker 2: the ear of some pretty important people and was able
Speaker 2: to add in some very valuable protections.
Speaker 6: I decided that I would write something and send it
Speaker 6: to them as a sort of background that would add
Speaker 6: to the discussion. So I looked at constitutions around the
Speaker 6: world that at that time had the right to healthy environment,
Speaker 6: and then I put forward the arguments for having it
Speaker 6: in the constitution today.
Speaker 2: Article one nine j of Guyana's Constitution grants every citizen
Speaker 2: quote the right to an environment that is not harmful
Speaker 2: to his or her health or well being. It also
Speaker 2: requires the state to protect the environment for the benefit
Speaker 2: of present and future generations. You may remember we did
Speaker 2: a whole season of damages on rights of nature. It's
Speaker 2: a legal concept that gives constitutional rights to ecosystems, which
Speaker 2: then also gives rights to communities around those ecosystems to
Speaker 2: be able to legally protect them, whether they're forests or
Speaker 2: watersheds or lakes. What Guyana wrote into its constitution is
Speaker 2: the flip side of that coin. It grants humans the
Speaker 2: right to a healthy environment. So if a corporation or
Speaker 2: the government is doing something that infringes on that right,
Speaker 2: they can be sued for violating the constitution. This constitutional
Speaker 2: amendment was written years before Exelon would strike oil off
Speaker 2: Guyana's coast. But like I mentioned before, the country had
Speaker 2: already been through several waves of extractive colonialism and Janki
Speaker 2: and many other Guyanese citizens were over it.
Speaker 6: Guyana has had bonanza after bonanza, gold, boux side, diamonds, timber,
Speaker 6: you name it. For fifty five years, the political parties
Speaker 6: have run this country into the ground.
Speaker 2: Its gold, box, side, timber, and diamonds had all been
Speaker 2: pillaged to make foreign companies money Janki hoped that enshrining
Speaker 2: the right to a healthy environment in the country's constitution
Speaker 2: would give citizens some protection next time anyone wanted to
Speaker 2: plunder their resources.
Speaker 6: Where are Guyana's gold reserves? Where is the money from
Speaker 6: the gold? Where is the money from the box side,
Speaker 6: Where is the money from the diamonds, Where is the
Speaker 6: money from the sugar, Where is the money from the agriculture,
Speaker 6: Where is the money from the fishing, etc. The list
Speaker 6: is almost endless because we are so full of wealth
Speaker 6: and yet the people in this country are poor. We
Speaker 6: have people sleeping on the streets and eating out of
Speaker 6: the bins, So there is no point in anybody saying
Speaker 6: oil is going to make Guyana rich.
Speaker 2: Usually when someone criticizes the government in Guyana, people accuse
Speaker 2: them of being against whatever political party is in power,
Speaker 2: which also ties into long standing racial divides. So it's
Speaker 2: worth noting that Jankie is an equal opportunity critic when
Speaker 2: it comes to Guyanese politicians, and she couldn't believe that
Speaker 2: despite all all of her efforts and all of the
Speaker 2: careful language embedded into Guyanese law, both parties governments just
Speaker 2: didn't enforce any of it.
Speaker 5: We reached the huge milestone of declaring ten billion oil
Speaker 5: equivalent barrels offshore Guyana.
Speaker 6: My heart just sank because I know oil is a
Speaker 6: disaster and it's the worst possible thing that could have
Speaker 6: happened to Guyana. And people just began to go crazy
Speaker 6: at the idea of all this oil wealth. And sure enough,
Speaker 6: the first thing that we saw was that they entered
Speaker 6: into a new agreement which was secret. They wouldn't release
Speaker 6: it to people. When they finally released it, it was atrocious.
Speaker 2: As we talked about last episode, the original contract between
Speaker 2: Exxon and Guyana was signed in eighteen ninety nine, but
Speaker 2: at the time, Guyana's oil was not that attractive because
Speaker 2: Exon was still drilling in Venezuela, where it was much
Speaker 2: easier to access oil. Plus, the Guyanese government had granted
Speaker 2: Exon extraordinarily long exploration permits, so the company was quite
Speaker 2: happy to just camp out on its offshore blocks in
Speaker 2: Guyana until it needed them. When Exon did leave Venezuela,
Speaker 2: it returned to Guyana and after it found oil, lots
Speaker 2: of it, the company signed a new contract with the government.
Speaker 2: But no matter what the contract said, Exxon and its
Speaker 2: subsidiary ESSO would still be required by law, the law
Speaker 2: Jankie helped to write to do a comprehensive environmental impact assessment.
Speaker 2: According to Jenkie, that is not exactly what happened.
Speaker 6: So ESSO started to do this environmental impact assessment. It
Speaker 6: was absolutely atrocious for a start, Jankie says.
Speaker 2: Environmental impact assessments are supposed to be conducted by an
Speaker 2: independent third party, but Exon used to firm and has
Speaker 2: an ongoing contract with.
Speaker 6: That rule was breached from day one. But people were
Speaker 6: so excited about this oil that no one was focusing on.
Speaker 2: This second Jankie says, each part of the offshore drilling
Speaker 2: project should have its own environmental impact assessment, but that
Speaker 2: didn't happen here.
Speaker 7: You need an environmental impact assessment for each one of
Speaker 7: the eight production wells, each of the six deep water wells,
Speaker 7: each of the three gas wells, the sewage, the ballast,
Speaker 7: the produced water, the cooling water, the transportation of the oil,
Speaker 7: and so on. Even the seismic studies should have an
Speaker 7: environmental impact assessment because of the impact on marine mammals.
Speaker 2: The one that ESSO drafted for its first production site
Speaker 2: does consider the impact of a large scale spill. They
Speaker 2: calculated that if twenty thousand barrels a day were spilled
Speaker 2: for thirty days, that quote little irreversible damage would be expected,
Speaker 2: although it could take a decade or more for all
Speaker 2: resources to fully recover, so.
Speaker 7: The total spill would be six hundred thousand barrels of oil. Well,
Speaker 7: in nineteen eighty nine, the Exxon Valdez spilled two hundred
Speaker 7: and fifty seven thousand barrels of oil, so roughly half
Speaker 7: what we're talking about at the moment. That spill covered
Speaker 7: eleven thousand square miles. It killed hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 7: birds and animals, and unknown quantities of salmon and herring,
Speaker 7: and nearly thirty years later, the area has not recovered
Speaker 7: and probably never will. This environmental impact assessment is a
Speaker 7: totally inadequate assessment of the risk.
Speaker 2: And the straw that broke Melinda Janki's back was when
Speaker 2: she noticed that Guyana's Environmental Protection Agency there EPA issued
Speaker 2: as is permit the same day received their Environmental Impact
Speaker 2: Assessment and Environmental Management Assessment. Those documents are each hundreds
Speaker 2: of pages long.
Speaker 6: So it is a mystery as to when exactly the
Speaker 6: Environmental Protection Agency read these documents if in fact they
Speaker 6: did read them.
Speaker 2: Jenki started going to every government event or meeting she
Speaker 2: could about the oil project.
Speaker 6: So at this event, the advisor to the President on
Speaker 6: oil was telling people that they didn't really know the
Speaker 6: oil industry and they had to trust the oil companies.
Speaker 2: Let that sink in for a second. Knowing all we
Speaker 2: know about how oil companies conduct business, the government was
Speaker 2: opting to trust them in good faith, and JANKI was
Speaker 2: not going to let that happen.
Speaker 6: I was utterly outraged by that, particularly as it was
Speaker 6: coming from someone who was very close to the president.
Speaker 6: And I began talking to someone there and he said
Speaker 6: he would like to do a case, but nobody would
Speaker 6: do the case for him to challenge the oil and
Speaker 6: I said, I'll do it.
Speaker 2: It was one of those further moment decisions you make
Speaker 2: without really thinking it through. Jankie had been out of
Speaker 2: the litigation game for years by this point, and she
Speaker 2: wasn't working with a firm anymore, but she wanted to
Speaker 2: take on the oil companies, and she figured she'd be
Speaker 2: able to find another lawyer to join her.
Speaker 6: I thought, I'll get someone else to help with this,
Speaker 6: but in fact I couldn't get anybody to help with it.
Speaker 2: Many of the country's lawyers were already either working for
Speaker 2: ESSO or for the government or for a supplier connected
Speaker 2: to the project. Again, Ghana is small. There are only
Speaker 2: so many lawyers and law clerks there. Jankie was quickly
Speaker 2: finding that a whole lot of them just couldn't join
Speaker 2: her because of those conflicts of interest, And then there's
Speaker 2: the issue of folks just not want in that smoke.
Speaker 2: By this point, it wasn't just exon pushing the oil project.
Speaker 2: The government was all for it too. And there's a
Speaker 2: very real and relatively recent history in Guyana of the
Speaker 2: government suppressing opposition, sometimes violently. That's a big part of
Speaker 2: why Jankie's family left Guyana when she was a kid.
Speaker 2: Now she was asking someone to take on that risk
Speaker 2: for a case that only had a few thousand dollars
Speaker 2: worth of crowdfunding. That's right. To fund the case. They
Speaker 2: got donations from citizens and from some Guyanese people who
Speaker 2: were living outside of the country to get things going.
Speaker 2: She started by filing cases around the permits, arguing that
Speaker 2: the environmental impact assessments were faulty and that the Guyanese
Speaker 2: government had violated its own laws by issuing an extra
Speaker 2: long permit to essout, and she had an early win.
Speaker 6: We cut SS permits down from over twenty three years
Speaker 6: to five years.
Speaker 2: Jankie felt like if the government would just use the
Speaker 2: laws that were already on the books, they could make
Speaker 2: this project too expensive to be worth Exon's attention at all,
Speaker 2: because remember, part of what's driving Exon's increased presence in
Speaker 2: Guyana is the fact that it can move quickly and
Speaker 2: cheaply there. So if the government would just tell the
Speaker 2: oil companies to slow down, be careful with all the rules,
Speaker 2: then the contract that's got so many people upset, the
Speaker 2: one we talked about last time, that some are pushing
Speaker 2: to renegotiate, it would kind of be beside the point.
Speaker 6: I think it's foolish, and I think it's naive. Exxon
Speaker 6: and its partners are not going to come back to
Speaker 6: the table to renegotiate anything unless they get a better deal.
Speaker 2: She says. Those pushing for contract renegotiation should be cheering
Speaker 2: on these cases too.
Speaker 6: It's my feeling that if we actually properly enforce those laws,
Speaker 6: this operation would have to be show and if that happens,
Speaker 6: then for throughnegotiation people at least then you could say,
Speaker 6: if you were being commercially minded, as opposed to naive,
Speaker 6: you can only restart if you give us a proper deal.
Speaker 2: Keep in mind that Jankie has been inside the belly
Speaker 2: of the beast, so to speak. She has been the
Speaker 2: person on the other side of that conference table trying
Speaker 2: to get oil companies more money. So she has a
Speaker 2: better idea than most how to negotiate against them, and
Speaker 2: since she knows they won't come back to the table,
Speaker 2: her weapon of choice is lawsuits, which is why in
Speaker 2: late twenty twenty two, she filed her sixth case, this
Speaker 2: time arguing that the government is not requiring a large
Speaker 2: enough insurance policy from Axon because you know, a spill
Speaker 2: would likely be much more catastrophic than what they're projecting.
Speaker 2: It's the first of Jenkie's arguments that seems to have
Speaker 2: prompted a major marketing response from Exon. Here is Exon
Speaker 2: Guyana's president, Alistair Routledge, in a promotional video about of
Speaker 2: all things insurance. See if you can spot some of
Speaker 2: the tactics we laid out last time.
Speaker 5: Recognizing the ongoing discussion and in many cases misinformation around
Speaker 5: oil spill insurance. Exomobile Guyana wishes to categorically state that
Speaker 5: it has insurance coverage that meets international industry standards for
Speaker 5: all its petroleum activities in Guyana.
Speaker 2: Everyone else is spreading misinformation and we've got it covered.
Speaker 2: But what Jenki has focused on in her suit goes
Speaker 2: beyond the sort of insurance that Routledge is talking about.
Speaker 2: She's arguing for something called financial assurance, which is effectively
Speaker 2: an unlimited liability policy, meaning you break it, you fix it.
Speaker 2: There's no limit on the amount of money Exon could
Speaker 2: have to spend to clean up a major disaster. But
Speaker 2: here's the thing. Guyanese law already requires financial assurance as
Speaker 2: part of Exon's drilling permits, and still, Jankie says, the
Speaker 2: government is just not enforcing its own laws, which is
Speaker 2: part of what makes Guyana such an appealing place to
Speaker 2: do business for companies like Exxon. The government is providing
Speaker 2: little oversight of the project. We talked earlier about a
Speaker 2: faulty gas compressor on Exon's first production rig. The company
Speaker 2: claims that today the compressor is fixed and everything is
Speaker 2: working as it should be. Jankie's point is the fact
Speaker 2: that it wasn't working for so long is exactly the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that makes the unlimited liability policy necessary.
Speaker 2: If the companies were continuing to pump oil with a
Speaker 2: piece of equipment they knew was faulty, she argues, how
Speaker 2: can Guyana trust that won't happen again, or that it
Speaker 2: won't be catastrophic next time, because remember.
Speaker 6: Little things were what caused the bpmcondo well blowout. The
Speaker 6: bpmcondo well blowout happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The
Speaker 6: United States of America has more experience, more resources, more expertise,
Speaker 6: more technology, more boats, more everything than anybody. And that
Speaker 6: happened in just in the Gulf of Mexico, and yet
Speaker 6: it was devastating.
Speaker 2: Gana not only lacks a regulatory system for oil, it
Speaker 2: also does not have a bench of petroleum experts just
Speaker 2: hanging out in Georgetown waiting to jump into action if
Speaker 2: a blowout occurs, or even just a large spill. And
Speaker 2: according to Exon's own environmental impact assessments for some of
Speaker 2: its more recent production sites, in some parts of the
Speaker 2: offshore project, if there were a spell, ocean currents could
Speaker 2: carry oil throughout the Caribbean, impacting up to fourteen Caribbean islands.
Speaker 6: This country knows nothing about oil and even less about
Speaker 6: oil danger and oil spills. The risk to Guyana is incredible.
Speaker 6: This oil production. This is a reckless gamble by the
Speaker 6: government of Guyana with the future of Guyana. It's a
Speaker 6: reckless gamble by the governments of Guyana for the entire Caribbean.
Speaker 6: The maps show that if there is a well blowout,
Speaker 6: that oil is going to end up on in Caribbean countries,
Speaker 6: our Caribbean sisters and brothers.
Speaker 2: Those countries depend largely on tourism and fishing for their economies,
Speaker 2: two industries that could be wiped out for years if
Speaker 2: oil were to wash up on shore in a big way.
Speaker 2: Jenkie says she remembers watching the people of Valdez, Alaska
Speaker 2: fight for years to get Exxon to properly clean up
Speaker 2: that spell, and she doesn't think the Guyanese government should
Speaker 2: trust that they're going to get any better treatment, especially
Speaker 2: if Guyana finds itself on the hook for damages in
Speaker 2: other countries. Jenkie argues that because the industry isn't properly regulated,
Speaker 2: the government could be held liable for any damages the
Speaker 2: project inflicts on neighboring countries.
Speaker 6: So you have a situation where Guyana's oil production could
Speaker 6: potentially destroy Caribbean economies. We are talking about billions of
Speaker 6: dollars worth of loss in addition to devastating the biodiversity
Speaker 6: of the region, and you can't put a price on that.
Speaker 6: It's all very well to say, well, we can compensate
Speaker 6: the tourism sector, but you can't walk into a shop
Speaker 6: and buy a new sperm whale. The wildlife that is
Speaker 6: in this part of the world is incredible. We have
Speaker 6: rare species and all of this is at risk because
Speaker 6: of this oil drilling. So has a permit. Now, if
Speaker 6: Essay is in breach of that permit, who's liable. Well,
Speaker 6: of course we would say that SOO is liable, But
Speaker 6: I already told you this is an offshore company that
Speaker 6: doesn't have billions of dollars worth of assets. It's going
Speaker 6: to come back to Guyana.
Speaker 2: In other words, if there's a massive spill in the
Speaker 2: region and nearby countries like Trinidad or Barbados have their
Speaker 2: fishing and tourism industries ruined by oil from Guyana, they're
Speaker 2: likely to come looking to Guyana for compensation.
Speaker 6: SO doesn't have the billions of dollars that it could
Speaker 6: compensate people for. And what happens then, well, the Caribbean
Speaker 6: countries could come to Guyana and ask Guyana to pay compensation. Now,
Speaker 6: under international law, you can be liable for trans boundary harm.
Speaker 2: Jankie says. There's every reason to believe that Guyana would
Speaker 2: be found liable because even international financial analysts are calling
Speaker 2: attention to the lack of oversight on the project.
Speaker 6: Ghana is not doing its due diligence. It's not ensuring
Speaker 6: that s SO adheres to the Environmental Protection Act, it's
Speaker 6: not ensuring that s is running its operations properly. Why
Speaker 6: on Earth would you allow somebody to continue producing oil
Speaker 6: when you know that their gas compressor is defective. What
Speaker 6: sort of government allows an oil company to operate above
Speaker 6: the safety limits.
Speaker 2: Then there's the pollution that's produced even when everything is
Speaker 2: working as it should. Greenhouse gases which exacerbate climate change,
Speaker 2: and volatile organic compounds and particulate matter, which have been
Speaker 2: linked to lower life expectancy, and a whole host of
Speaker 2: respiratory and cardiac issues are part for the course in
Speaker 2: oil and gas production. You cannot produce and refine oil
Speaker 2: and gas without generating carbon dioxide and methane, the two
Speaker 2: primary drivers of climate change, and Guyana isn't just on
Speaker 2: the frontier of the global oil industry, it's also on
Speaker 2: the front lines of the climate crisis. Here's investigative journalist
Speaker 2: Antonia Jujaz again.
Speaker 4: By twenty thirty, Georgetown and most of the coast is
Speaker 4: expected to be underwater.
Speaker 2: That's the same year financial analysts predict Guyana will finally
Speaker 2: pay off Exxon.
Speaker 6: I think it's really important that people stop thinking of
Speaker 6: Guyana as a developing country that needs to be helped
Speaker 6: and starts looking at us and saying, well, these guys
Speaker 6: are a carbon sink and they are under threat because
Speaker 6: of Exon Mobile and of the oil companies. And we
Speaker 6: have a responsibility to rein in those oil companies because
Speaker 6: those are oil companies coming from the global North.
Speaker 2: That's our story. Next time, Lights Sweet Crude is a
Speaker 2: drilled and Damage's co production. Both shows are critical frequency originals.
Speaker 2: Our editor and senior producer is Sarah Ventri. Sound design,
Speaker 2: mixing and mastering by Martin Saltz Austwick. Our fact checker
Speaker 2: is Anna Pujel Mazzini, and our first amendment attorney is
Speaker 2: James Wheaton. The show is reported and written by me
Speaker 2: Amy Westerboldt, additional reporting by Keana Wilberg in Guyana and
Speaker 2: Antonio Juhaz in DC. We had additional assistants in Guyana
Speaker 2: from Jamal Thomas, Salvador de Caarre's Wilderness Explorers and the
Speaker 2: staff at Kaiman House. Special thanks to Michael McCrystal for
Speaker 2: his help as well. Our theme song is Bird in
Speaker 2: the Hand by Foreknown. The song nam Tera Dishmann is
Speaker 2: performed by Joyce or Milla Harris in Guyana. The song
Speaker 2: Liquidator is a cover of a Harry j Allstars song
Speaker 2: performed by the Young Ones of Guyana, licensed by BME Music.
Speaker 2: The song Beiji Bogi is written and recorded by Bill
Speaker 2: Rogers and licensed from the BBC Music Library. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Susy Buttress of the Casual Birder podcast for her
Speaker 2: bird song recordings which we used in this episode. Our
Speaker 2: artwork is by Matt Fleming. Marketing is handled by the
Speaker 2: Great Maggie Taylor pr and media outreach by the wonderful
Speaker 2: folks at Tink Media. Lauren Passel, Ariel Nissenblatt, and Devin Andrade.
Speaker 2: The show is supported in part by generous grants from
Speaker 2: the Doc Society, File Foundation, the William Collins Kohler Foundation,
Speaker 2: and you are listeners. If you would like to support
Speaker 2: our work, you can sign up for our newsletter at
Speaker 2: drilled podcast dot com. You can also access transcripts of
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Speaker 2: It also it really helps us if you would please
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Speaker 2: next time.