WEBVTT - S8 Ep3 | Unlimited Liability 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:05.920 Just opened up my book started reading the first sentence 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.399 in the paragraph. When I heard what sounded like freight 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:14.360 train coming through my bedroom. I jumped out of the bed. 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.040 And then there was a pumping sound that consecutively got 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.720 much faster, and with each thumb I felt the rig 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:32.240 actually shape, and there was an initial booms. 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.680 The lights went out, and there was a huge explosion. 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:43.360 This is a clip from National Geographics documentary about the 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:47.360 deep Water Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:51.159 are dozens of documentaries like this about the disaster, and 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:53.720 even in future films starring Mark Wahlberg. 0:00:56.720 --> 0:01:01.360 No, that is a genuine dinosaur tooth gonna flip out, 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:05.920 good man, Mike, are you seeing this? 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:08.360 They all say the same thing. 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:11.560 The destruction of the deep Water Horizon had been building 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:13.919 for weeks in a series of mishaps. 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:18.479 They pledged repeatedly to run a safer operation, yet they continue. 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:21.399 To cut costs. The tension in every drilling operation is 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.320 between doing things safely and doing them fast. 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.319 You'd hope that the whole industry, all of the oil companies, 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.680 would have learned from these mistakes. But now a lot 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.880 of experts think Diana is following in some of the 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:37.880 exact same footsteps. 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:41.560 They're facing the long term risks of a blowout or 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:43.319 a catastrophic Still. 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:47.920 Now it's clear that they are running the operations at 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:51.000 greater capacity levels than was designed. 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:56.120 A lot of the right words that Exxon had written down, 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:01.880 but just no depth to it, no details on the 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.720 security provisions that needed to be in place to prevent 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:06.520 a disaster. 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.200 One reason this is all so incredibly disturbing is that 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:16.320 the Deepwater Horizon disaster in twenty ten was one of 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:20.520 the most catastrophic oil spills in history, and yet it 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.480 happened under BP, one of the world's largest oil companies, 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.440 in the Gulf of Mexico, an area that's been producing 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.520 oil for almost a century and has some of the 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:36.040 world's best regulations and industry oversight. In other words, in 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:38.840 the best case scenario, we had one of the worst 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:43.600 spills in history. There are two things that make deep 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:48.160 water offshore drilling projects especially risky. The first is that 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.040 when you're drilling in more than five thousand feet of water, 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:54.760 there's about an elephant's worth of pressure bearing down on 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:58.240 every square inch of your equipment, So the chances of 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.280 a screw loosening or a part breaking are really high. 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:04.480 The second is that almost every time you drill for oil, 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:07.560 you get gas as well. The two tend to hang 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:12.320 out together, and that gas needs to be managed because 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.680 if it comes rushing to the surface and finds a spark, 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.000 which there are many on an oil rig, things can 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:25.200 go boom. That's a big part of what happened with 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:28.240 the explosion of the deep Water Horizon rig, and it 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.800 turns out there are a lot of similarities between what 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.760 happened in the Gulf then and what's happening in Guyana now. 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:42.800 In both cases, oil companies decided to continue production despite 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.520 known issues with equipment. In Guyana, excell On hot a 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:51.080 problem early the first production rigs gas compressor was faulty. 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:55.480 That's part of the reason that instead of reinjecting the 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.800 gas underground as they had planned, they started burning it 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:02.400 off or flaring it. They sent it off to be fixed, 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:04.400 but it didn't work, so they set it off again, 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.160 and again it didn't work, so they redesigned it, and 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.040 Exon says that its redesigned gas compressor was fully functional 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.720 as of the end of twenty twenty two and that 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:18.719 it is taking safety and maintenance seriously in Guyana. But 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:22.440 the company is also proudly talking about how they've managed 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:26.160 to fast track everything in this project. Remember, they say 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:31.440 their existing wells are producing above design capacity, meaning more 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:35.440 than they're designed to produce. And unlike the Gulf region, 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.800 Guyana is really new to the oil business. That includes 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.359 regulating the industry too. 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.040 The government has admitted that it doesn't have yet the 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:50.200 full capacity to do deepwater regulation, and people who are 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:54.720 former government officials who I interviewed were very clear that 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:59.080 it lacks anything close to the regulatory capacity to oversee 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:00.159 deepwater drilling. 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.480 A high risk project with little oversight fast tracking production, 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.440 what could go wrong? The thing is, even though it 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.560 seems like fast tracking oil production would bring the money 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.680 in sooner, it actually kind of puts the whole endeavor 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:20.360 at risk before it has a chance to make Guyana rich. 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.960 The World Bank said this publicly in twenty nineteen. They 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:27.960 gave the Guyanese government twenty million dollars to create an 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.280 agency that would regulate the oil and gas industry to 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:34.520 try and prevent these kinds of really risky moves, But 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.120 so far that hasn't happened. And S and P Global 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:42.080 even said that Guyana is quote only a corruption scandal 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:47.200 or environmental accident away from total disaster on the oil front. 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.840 So it's starting to seem more likely that Guyana will 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:58.320 have a massive oil disaster than a massive payday. If 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:02.560 a blowout were to happen on any of Guyana's offshore wells, 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:07.400 the cost to its communities and industries would be astronomical. 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:12.760 Remember when Excellon's president and Guyana Alistair Routledge talked about 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.320 how the oil companies had taken on all the. 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.520 Risk excell Mobile has and see, you take all of 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:23.000 the risk up front, so if we never made an 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:26.760 economic development, we would swallow all of the costs that 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:28.880 went into that investment. 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:34.280 Well, now that risk has transferred entirely to Guyana, that is, 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:39.440 unless one scrappy Guyanese lawyer gets her way in court. 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:42.160 The oil companies are the same the world over. They 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:46.560 want to make money and that's all they are interested in, 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:49.960 and you have to find some way to show them 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.000 that actually they can't do it because there are rules, 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:55.960 or there are there is something else that will stop them. 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:58.720 But the something else that would stop them is not morality. 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:02.200 It's not the Germond it's not. Oh it's a bad 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:04.360 deal for us. You should give us more. Oh it's 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.520 an abusive deal. Oh it's an exploitative deal. The more 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.640 abusive and exploitative the deal is, the more money they make. 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:15.080 This is Melinda Jenkie and she has another idea for that, 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:23.480 something else. This is light, sweet crude, and I'm Amy Westerveld. 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:25.239 Stay with us. 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:50.400 On the light that we go in. 0:07:50.960 --> 0:08:01.280 Yeah, that metallic sound is her take. Oh my god, 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:03.679 the metal tank. 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.520 I just need to I'm in the middle of. 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.880 Melinda Jankie works in a home office right next to 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:19.040 the pen her rescue dogs stay in when strangers like 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:22.920 me are visiting her. She lives in a bustling residential 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:27.120 neighborhood full of family homes. It's easy to miss Jankie's 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:29.720 house because it's set back from the street, hidden by 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:31.880 trees that are filled with birds. 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:34.400 And I think everyone should be able to wake up 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.640 in the morning and there's just something very beautiful in 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:42.040 front of them, flowers and birds and the sound of 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:43.320 the birds, birds song. 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.000 Even in the middle of the flowers and the birds 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.400 and the dogs, Janki is always working on a zillion 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:51.160 things at once. 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:58.000 Well, here we are in my office, which is as 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:04.200 you can see, full of books, full of papers. This 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:08.240 is really where I do most of my work. 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:11.000 She was sitting at her desk under a life sized 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:15.480 painting of a yellow jaguar, which seems very apt. Jenki 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.079 is not a large woman, and she doesn't speak loudly, 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:20.559 but there's a quiet rage about her. 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:26.520 But it's not necessarily where I do my thinking, because 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:31.960 thinking and work are not always the same thing. I 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:35.280 do a lot of my thinking with my trees and 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:39.240 my plants. I do a lot of my thinking with 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.120 the stars at night. 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.439 Nature is what has drawn Jenkie back to Guyana over 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:49.079 and over again. She grew up in a neighborhood Georgetown 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:51.800 called Sabriyanville, near the ocean. 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.800 And so every night for the first few years of 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:58.520 my life, I went to bed with the sound of 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:03.440 the sea in my ear, and Sabrineville was very quiet. 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:09.240 We lived with our neighbors basically, so all the children 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.720 were in all the houses all of the time. And 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:16.080 I would say I was obviously brought up by my 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.240 mother and father, but I was also brought up by 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.320 all the other parents in the neighborhood. 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:31.400 By the time Jankie was twelve. Guyana had descended into 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:36.760 constant unrest. There were politically motivated killings, riots in the streets, 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:40.800 The economy was unstable and it seemed like an unsafe 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.320 place to raise kids, so her parents made the tough 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:48.280 decision to leave. They moved the family first to Zambia, 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.600 then to Trinidad, and eventually Jankie went to the UK 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:56.839 to study law at Oxford University. Loads of Guyanese people 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.720 leave the country to study in the US or the UK. 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.120 Brain drain is something government officials are constantly trying to 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.880 get on top of, and so many people mentioned it 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.080 to us. In fact, only about fifty percent of Guyanese 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:13.000 people actually live in Guyana, and in the vast majority 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:16.840 of cases, once people leave, they don't come back. After 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:19.640 Jankie finished at Oxford, she got hired at one of 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:23.080 the top corporate law firms in London. It was about 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:25.840 as far away as you could get from waking up 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.480 to the birds and falling asleep to the sound of 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:34.400 the ocean. After a few years, she was ready for 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:35.400 something new. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:39.080 And at the time it seemed like BP was a 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:39.880 good place to go. 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:48.960 Yes, BP that BP as in one of the largest 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:53.160 oil companies in the world. The company that was overseeing 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:58.520 the deep water horizon drilling, JANKI negotiated for them throughout Europe. 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:02.960 The work was It's very interesting. I had far more 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.880 responsibility than I would have had if I'd stayed in 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:11.240 the law firm. I met some very interesting people, and 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.439 I traveled. And you know, when you're young, the idea 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.079 of seeing the world is very attractive. You want to 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.200 go to other places, you want to meet other people, 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.680 you want to experience other cultures, and you just want 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:23.200 to learn. 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.079 But at a certain point she just couldn't do it anymore. 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.120 I was in a meeting and one of the people 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:34.040 at the table turned to me and he said, Oh, 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:38.319 this is such sexy work. And I thought to myself, 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:43.640 you know, this is really time to leave. 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:46.760 It wasn't so much the work she was tired of, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.240 as the context She missed being surrounded by nature. She 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:53.959 was also getting pretty tired of having to prove to 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:58.440 white Europeans that she, a brown woman from the global South, 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:01.760 knew what she was talking about. She had a standing 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:04.800 offer to work as a partner in a prestigious corporate 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.440 firm in Guyana, so she went for it. She'd be 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:11.080 doing roughly the same sort of commercial work that she'd 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.360 been doing, but in a place she loved and on 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:15.360 her own terms. 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:18.199 You know, sometimes when I look out of the window, 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.560 there's a hummingbird there, and that's very beautiful, and I 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:23.199 don't want to wake up to an alarm clock, and 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.400 I have not woken up to alarm clock for decades. 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.040 It was during these years that these two very different 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.760 parts of Janki's life, her childhood in Guyana, growing up 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.679 surrounded by unloving nature, and her career in London negotiating 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.880 for a BP, came together into a whole new chapter. 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.520 Well, I think when you grew up with nature, then 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.920 you have a relationship with the world around you, and 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:51.600 then if you're a lawyer, you sort of at some 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:56.959 point I suppose the to connect. And I wanted to 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:04.000 protect Guyana's environment. I wanted to protect the nature that 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.760 I grew up with and that I think everybody should 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:09.280 have a chance to grow up with. 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:12.680 And because Guyana is quite a small country, with just 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:16.240 under eight hundred thousand residents, she was able to get 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:20.360 involved in protecting its environment in a very real way. 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.200 There was a meeting at the Pegasus hotel. I wanted 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:27.720 to go, but I had no way to go to 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:33.880 the meeting because I was just this completely unimportant individual. 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:37.720 The meeting was focused on environmental regulation and it was 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.400 by invitation only. Jenkie was able to score an invite 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:42.920 through a friend, so. 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:47.040 I went and it was interminably boring. But in the 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.080 break I was able to talk to one of the 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:53.200 government officials and say to him that I had looked 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.560 at their draft Environmental Act and I thought that it 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:58.239 was inadequate. 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.800 This is the sort of thing that makes people either 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.680 love or hate Melinda Jankie. She says exactly what she 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:09.560 thinks in every situation, but especially when she cares deeply 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:12.600 about something. This time she was talking about the need 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:18.040 to build in real safeguards for Guyana's valuable ecosystems. The 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.520 country has been through phase after phase of what economists 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:25.880 call the resource curse. It happens when a less developed 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:29.200 country puts all of its focus on the economic benefit 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:34.440 attached to selling a particular resource like gold or diamonds 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:39.080 or oil. But instead of untold riches, what those countries 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:43.080 generally get is an unstable economy that lives or dies 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:46.840 by the price of whatever commodity they're now dependent on selling. 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:49.920 Janki figured if the government was going to go to 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:53.280 the trouble of writing a new environmental production Act, it 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:57.000 should have some teeth, and so at the Pegasus Hotel 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.640 in the mid nineties, she said just that to a 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:02.400 government official and it actually paid off. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:07.800 He didn't brush me off. He said, oh, well, send 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.960 me something about it. So I wrote a paper explaining 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:16.320 why I thought this act was inadequate. The next thing 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:18.120 I knew was they asked me if I'd like to 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.840 actually work on this as a consultant, and so I 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.320 said yes, and I was hired. 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:30.720 Jenki's input transformed the proposed regulation from one that sounded 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:33.480 okam paper but really didn't do much, to one of 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:37.360 the most rigorous pieces of environmental legislation, not just in 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:41.160 the region but in the world. Companies that wanted to 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:46.040 tap Diana's resources would have to undertake serious environmental and 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:50.600 climate impact assessments. And this was about three years or 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.880 so before the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, which means climate 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:57.800 impact assessments were not a thing that a lot of 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:02.280 countries were really doing at the time. Jankie also wrote 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:08.159 in requirements for comprehensive environmental management. She introduced the idea 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.879 of natural capital and the need to protect it. Natural 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:15.399 capital is the monetary value of all the things that 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:19.360 a healthy ecosystem does for us, like keeping our air 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:23.960 and drinking water clean, or storing carbon to curb climate change. 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:27.879 Jankie insisted that the government protect that value. It's an 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:32.280 incredibly progressive piece of environmental regulation, even by today's standards, 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:37.840 never mind back in the mid nineties. That work also 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.119 earned Jankie a lot of credibility in the realm of 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.159 environmental law, so much so that when the government was 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:48.120 drafting a new constitution a few years later, Jankie had 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:51.160 the ear of some pretty important people and was able 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.160 to add in some very valuable protections. 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.959 I decided that I would write something and send it 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:03.080 to them as a sort of background that would add 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:07.520 to the discussion. So I looked at constitutions around the 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:11.320 world that at that time had the right to healthy environment, 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:16.080 and then I put forward the arguments for having it 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.560 in the constitution today. 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:23.800 Article one nine j of Guyana's Constitution grants every citizen 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.359 quote the right to an environment that is not harmful 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.399 to his or her health or well being. It also 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.480 requires the state to protect the environment for the benefit 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:42.080 of present and future generations. You may remember we did 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.840 a whole season of damages on rights of nature. It's 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:50.320 a legal concept that gives constitutional rights to ecosystems, which 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:55.359 then also gives rights to communities around those ecosystems to 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:59.000 be able to legally protect them, whether they're forests or 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:04.280 watersheds or lakes. What Guyana wrote into its constitution is 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.320 the flip side of that coin. It grants humans the 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:11.439 right to a healthy environment. So if a corporation or 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.760 the government is doing something that infringes on that right, 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:21.000 they can be sued for violating the constitution. This constitutional 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.720 amendment was written years before Exelon would strike oil off 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.440 Guyana's coast. But like I mentioned before, the country had 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:33.560 already been through several waves of extractive colonialism and Janki 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:37.920 and many other Guyanese citizens were over it. 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:44.800 Guyana has had bonanza after bonanza, gold, boux side, diamonds, timber, 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.840 you name it. For fifty five years, the political parties 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:51.160 have run this country into the ground. 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.280 Its gold, box, side, timber, and diamonds had all been 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:59.920 pillaged to make foreign companies money Janki hoped that enshrining 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.679 the right to a healthy environment in the country's constitution 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:07.399 would give citizens some protection next time anyone wanted to 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:09.280 plunder their resources. 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:13.280 Where are Guyana's gold reserves? Where is the money from 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:14.920 the gold? Where is the money from the box side, 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:17.280 Where is the money from the diamonds, Where is the 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:19.840 money from the sugar, Where is the money from the agriculture, 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.640 Where is the money from the fishing, etc. The list 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:27.520 is almost endless because we are so full of wealth 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.439 and yet the people in this country are poor. We 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:33.679 have people sleeping on the streets and eating out of 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:38.200 the bins, So there is no point in anybody saying 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:40.080 oil is going to make Guyana rich. 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.719 Usually when someone criticizes the government in Guyana, people accuse 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:48.080 them of being against whatever political party is in power, 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:52.320 which also ties into long standing racial divides. So it's 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:55.640 worth noting that Jankie is an equal opportunity critic when 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:59.239 it comes to Guyanese politicians, and she couldn't believe that 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:01.480 despite all all of her efforts and all of the 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:07.199 careful language embedded into Guyanese law, both parties governments just 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:09.360 didn't enforce any of it. 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:15.480 We reached the huge milestone of declaring ten billion oil 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:17.520 equivalent barrels offshore Guyana. 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:23.760 My heart just sank because I know oil is a 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.960 disaster and it's the worst possible thing that could have 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:34.760 happened to Guyana. And people just began to go crazy 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:38.639 at the idea of all this oil wealth. And sure enough, 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:43.960 the first thing that we saw was that they entered 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:47.600 into a new agreement which was secret. They wouldn't release 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:52.960 it to people. When they finally released it, it was atrocious. 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:57.560 As we talked about last episode, the original contract between 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:02.159 Exxon and Guyana was signed in eighteen ninety nine, but 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:06.000 at the time, Guyana's oil was not that attractive because 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:09.440 Exon was still drilling in Venezuela, where it was much 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:13.960 easier to access oil. Plus, the Guyanese government had granted 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:18.720 Exon extraordinarily long exploration permits, so the company was quite 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:21.320 happy to just camp out on its offshore blocks in 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:25.520 Guyana until it needed them. When Exon did leave Venezuela, 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:30.399 it returned to Guyana and after it found oil, lots 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:33.920 of it, the company signed a new contract with the government. 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:38.280 But no matter what the contract said, Exxon and its 0:22:38.280 --> 0:22:42.960 subsidiary ESSO would still be required by law, the law 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:48.200 Jankie helped to write to do a comprehensive environmental impact assessment. 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.040 According to Jenkie, that is not exactly what happened. 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.280 So ESSO started to do this environmental impact assessment. It 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:01.400 was absolutely atrocious for a start, Jankie says. 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.040 Environmental impact assessments are supposed to be conducted by an 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:08.679 independent third party, but Exon used to firm and has 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:10.560 an ongoing contract with. 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:14.399 That rule was breached from day one. But people were 0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:17.200 so excited about this oil that no one was focusing on. 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:20.800 This second Jankie says, each part of the offshore drilling 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:25.080 project should have its own environmental impact assessment, but that 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:26.040 didn't happen here. 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:30.080 You need an environmental impact assessment for each one of 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:34.240 the eight production wells, each of the six deep water wells, 0:23:34.400 --> 0:23:37.680 each of the three gas wells, the sewage, the ballast, 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:41.560 the produced water, the cooling water, the transportation of the oil, 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:45.600 and so on. Even the seismic studies should have an 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:49.960 environmental impact assessment because of the impact on marine mammals. 0:23:51.000 --> 0:23:54.400 The one that ESSO drafted for its first production site 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:57.800 does consider the impact of a large scale spill. They 0:23:57.840 --> 0:24:00.960 calculated that if twenty thousand barrels a day were spilled 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:06.119 for thirty days, that quote little irreversible damage would be expected, 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:09.240 although it could take a decade or more for all 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:12.920 resources to fully recover, so. 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:18.080 The total spill would be six hundred thousand barrels of oil. Well, 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:21.840 in nineteen eighty nine, the Exxon Valdez spilled two hundred 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:24.800 and fifty seven thousand barrels of oil, so roughly half 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:28.520 what we're talking about at the moment. That spill covered 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:32.159 eleven thousand square miles. It killed hundreds of thousands of 0:24:32.160 --> 0:24:35.720 birds and animals, and unknown quantities of salmon and herring, 0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:39.200 and nearly thirty years later, the area has not recovered 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:44.040 and probably never will. This environmental impact assessment is a 0:24:44.160 --> 0:24:47.440 totally inadequate assessment of the risk. 0:24:48.320 --> 0:24:51.520 And the straw that broke Melinda Janki's back was when 0:24:51.560 --> 0:24:57.159 she noticed that Guyana's Environmental Protection Agency there EPA issued 0:24:57.200 --> 0:25:01.959 as is permit the same day received their Environmental Impact 0:25:01.960 --> 0:25:07.200 Assessment and Environmental Management Assessment. Those documents are each hundreds 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:08.480 of pages long. 0:25:10.480 --> 0:25:15.080 So it is a mystery as to when exactly the 0:25:15.200 --> 0:25:19.880 Environmental Protection Agency read these documents if in fact they 0:25:19.880 --> 0:25:20.719 did read them. 0:25:21.200 --> 0:25:24.040 Jenki started going to every government event or meeting she 0:25:24.160 --> 0:25:26.359 could about the oil project. 0:25:27.640 --> 0:25:30.480 So at this event, the advisor to the President on 0:25:30.880 --> 0:25:33.359 oil was telling people that they didn't really know the 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:36.359 oil industry and they had to trust the oil companies. 0:25:37.640 --> 0:25:40.280 Let that sink in for a second. Knowing all we 0:25:40.359 --> 0:25:44.800 know about how oil companies conduct business, the government was 0:25:44.840 --> 0:25:48.679 opting to trust them in good faith, and JANKI was 0:25:48.720 --> 0:25:50.119 not going to let that happen. 0:25:50.960 --> 0:25:55.240 I was utterly outraged by that, particularly as it was 0:25:55.280 --> 0:25:59.000 coming from someone who was very close to the president. 0:26:00.560 --> 0:26:03.840 And I began talking to someone there and he said 0:26:03.880 --> 0:26:06.399 he would like to do a case, but nobody would 0:26:06.400 --> 0:26:09.640 do the case for him to challenge the oil and 0:26:09.720 --> 0:26:14.040