Speaker 1: Nice earth.
Speaker 2: Does that mean more close?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, oh good.
Speaker 2: First time I ever heard anything about Guyana it was
Speaker 2: years ago in a pirate bar, Yes, a pirate bar
Speaker 2: in San Francisco, drinking aged rum for the first time,
Speaker 2: while a friend of mine told me about this new
Speaker 2: gig he'd gotten promoting. A small South American country has
Speaker 2: an ecotourism destination. Conservation efforts and ecotourism have been a
Speaker 2: big thing in Guyana about as long as they've been
Speaker 2: a thing, period. But now the country is known not
Speaker 2: only for its pristine rainforest and hundreds of species of
Speaker 2: native birds, but also for its burgeoning oil industry. I
Speaker 2: wanted to know whether the ecotourism folks were annoyed by
Speaker 2: the oil folks, whether they worried that having to fly
Speaker 2: into an oil boomtown might dampen the ecotourism experience for people,
Speaker 2: or whether they could just sort of ignore it all.
Speaker 2: So we planned a trip to Kiman House, or as
Speaker 2: Americans might say, at Cayman House. Coimon House is an
Speaker 2: eco lodge and research center in the heart of Guyana's
Speaker 2: Rupununi region. Unlike the rest of the interior of the country,
Speaker 2: which is mountains and forest. The Rupununi is savannah. There
Speaker 2: are cowboys there and wide open spaces, and it's way
Speaker 2: closer to Brazil than it is to Georgetown. I was
Speaker 2: excited to explore a different part of the country, and
Speaker 2: then I messed up my flight plans and our producer
Speaker 2: Sarah had to go alone, first on a tiny plane
Speaker 2: to a city called Letham, and then on a two
Speaker 2: hour drive in a pickup truck over dirt roads.
Speaker 4: Hi. Hi, I'm Dilian, I'm Sarah Nice, Sarah Lay.
Speaker 1: Would you welcome to you? Carrion thim In House.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Kimon House is primarily staffed by members of various local
Speaker 2: indigenous tribes, which is quite common with ecotourism destinations in Guyana.
Speaker 2: The country has provided a model for ecotourism that can
Speaker 2: offer indigenous locals and income and visitors in immersive experience.
Speaker 2: Sometimes eco lodges double as research stations, and that's definitely
Speaker 2: true of Kiman House where they research yes kim in,
Speaker 2: specifically black kime in. If you've never seen one before.
Speaker 2: They're the same family as alligators. A lot of kimen
Speaker 2: are small, but the black kime in can be up
Speaker 2: to fourteen feet long, so a little bit terrifying. The
Speaker 2: boat a small metal one with a motor attached and
Speaker 2: some benches to sit on heads out. At sundown, the
Speaker 2: guy brings snacks and of course Guyana's famous El Dorado
Speaker 2: aged rum. It's humid and sweaty, and there are tons
Speaker 2: of mosquitoes, but serious says, it's so picturesque and gorgeous
Speaker 2: just you and all these animals around you, that none
Speaker 2: of that really matters, okay.
Speaker 4: And then as nightfall we will come shaning.
Speaker 1: If he has a bright art, he will come shaning
Speaker 1: looking for bars or animal whatsoever we can see on.
Speaker 2: Can I have some water before we get on the boat.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, if you want to have your urination, I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: you can use the bushit.
Speaker 1: Okay, No, I'm actually okay, but thank you.
Speaker 2: And it's not just time. And you'll see from the boat,
Speaker 2: Guyana's forests and rivers are teeming with life.
Speaker 1: Right here.
Speaker 6: It's just the monkeys, the birds, the lucky enough you
Speaker 6: see tupy swimming across or coffee barus and otters are.
Speaker 4: Come on here.
Speaker 2: When they do spot a kimen, they pull them up
Speaker 2: to tag or check them, and sometimes they take guests
Speaker 2: along for the ride.
Speaker 1: J Yeah, they say, what is that?
Speaker 4: That's how we get gen Along the way.
Speaker 2: Guides like this one, who referred to himself interchangeably as
Speaker 2: Josie and jose Id, birds by their call and tell
Speaker 2: visitors all about the local area and customs. The founders
Speaker 2: of Kiman House are an American couple who lived in
Speaker 2: Guyana for a number of years because one of them
Speaker 2: was a researcher studying you guessed it, the Black Kymen.
Speaker 2: They developed relationships with community members and created a library
Speaker 2: for local school children. They even started to look after
Speaker 2: the area's stray dogs, who now called Kimen House their
Speaker 2: home and give the staff some extra mouths to feed.
Speaker 2: Guyana has about a dozen of these sorts of eco
Speaker 2: lodges all across the country, and people come from all
Speaker 2: over the world to visit them. In twenty nineteen, Guyana
Speaker 2: was named the planet's top eco tourism destination at ITB Berlin,
Speaker 2: the largest tourism trade show in the world. Twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: That's the same year the country shipped its first barrel
Speaker 2: of oil. That honor of top ecotourism destination is one
Speaker 2: that Guyana had been working really hard to win for
Speaker 2: close to twenty years. So I thought, surely there would
Speaker 2: be some concerns about how becoming one of the world's
Speaker 2: largest oil producers could impact that. But it turned out
Speaker 2: tho opposie is true. That's our story today. I'm Ami
Speaker 2: Westervelt and this is light, sweet crude. Guyana has had
Speaker 2: a well deserved global reputation for conservation for a long time.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and nine, it was one of the
Speaker 2: very first participants in a UN program called RED which
Speaker 2: stands for Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Basically,
Speaker 2: it lets high emitting global North countries pay low emitting
Speaker 2: global South countries to preserve their forests. So Norway, an
Speaker 2: oil rich country, committed to pay two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: million dollars to Guyana provided that Guyana could show certain
Speaker 2: conservation metrics along the way. That deal was signed by
Speaker 2: former President Brought jug Daeo, Yes, the same jug Dao
Speaker 2: that's Vice president today and the government's biggest supporter of
Speaker 2: the oil industry. The payments from the Norway deal were
Speaker 2: supposed to fund low carbon development. The idea was that
Speaker 2: the money could help Guyana develop, but do so in
Speaker 2: a way that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. It was
Speaker 2: heralded as this great example of how we could value
Speaker 2: ecological services, things like forest full of trees that capture
Speaker 2: and store carbon dioxide, for example, or the preservation of biodiversity,
Speaker 2: but it still had the whiff of colonialism about it. Norway,
Speaker 2: a country that is tremendously wealthy from oil with a
Speaker 2: trillion dollars Sovereign Wealth Fund, telling Guyana how to preserve biodiversity.
Speaker 6: Okay, so you were saying you were going to get
Speaker 6: X dollars if you maintain deforestation rate that point zero
Speaker 6: five percent fifty million over five years.
Speaker 2: Dane Gobin is the CEO of the IBACRAMA International Center
Speaker 2: for Rainforest Conservation and Development, the crown jewel of Guyana's
Speaker 2: conservation and ecotourism efforts.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, what you're saying is that
Speaker 6: you have to satisfy other criteria to get the money. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so you're going to the shop to buy upound the butter,
Speaker 6: and you pay for the butler, and the guy is saying,
Speaker 6: so before I give you the butterer, you need to
Speaker 6: tell me if you're taking care of your children, if
Speaker 6: you wash your.
Speaker 2: Car more than a decade before the Norway deal was signed.
Speaker 2: Guyana created a three hundred and seventy one thousand hector
Speaker 2: reserve called Uacrama in the middle of what's called the
Speaker 2: Guyana Shield, an area with tremendous by diversity to the
Speaker 2: northwest the Amazon Rainforest. The government established the Ebucroma International
Speaker 2: Center there to research and pilot sustainable forestry and agriculture projects,
Speaker 2: and they opened the Ewacroma River Lodge as one of
Speaker 2: the country's first eco tourism destinations. Ebukroma has had loads
Speaker 2: of international donors over the years. Its current patron is
Speaker 2: King Charles.
Speaker 6: And I'm saying, Hondan, the butter is a dollar, I'm
Speaker 6: paying you a dollar. What's this side of stuff? So
Speaker 6: it's it's a challenge because the dough in a country
Speaker 6: doing it, it's taxpayers money, so they have to do
Speaker 6: it on the best practice. Quote governor's anti corruption targets
Speaker 6: should be met and sun it's a donation, right, and
Speaker 6: that's a challenge. So government is Saint Hondan, you're paying
Speaker 6: for the forest. You've agreed that this is the rate
Speaker 6: of defire station. We've maintained it. What's this about other stuff? Now,
Speaker 6: this is a business transaction. The people who want this
Speaker 6: have what they call steel ropes attached. It's not just
Speaker 6: the protective forests. And it's actually condescending because especially on
Speaker 6: the basis that you have destroyed your forest, but you're
Speaker 6: actually so you're giving me money to almost tell the
Speaker 6: breed to the air that you breathe, but you're telling
Speaker 6: us how to spend it.
Speaker 2: Gobin says that he's been on the other side of
Speaker 2: this sort of situation too, with payments to local indigenous
Speaker 2: groups around you, Acrama.
Speaker 6: We have had that at the level of the communities
Speaker 6: and let me, I can understand from their perspective. So
Speaker 6: when the communities aren't Timber and money's from us, we're
Speaker 6: worried about how this money is going to be spent.
Speaker 6: Will they go open a round shop? What will they do? So,
Speaker 6: I mean, we'd like to see a school build, we'd
Speaker 6: like to see scholarships, but this is their wood. We're
Speaker 6: paying them for deer wood. We can't tell them. So
Speaker 6: what we did with the communities, and it's a model,
Speaker 6: and I don't think it will work at them bilaterals,
Speaker 6: but we work with them. And he says, look, you
Speaker 6: set up a committee to look at how the money
Speaker 6: will be spent.
Speaker 2: So in a way, there is no clean money. It's
Speaker 2: always tied to something, which begs the question where do
Speaker 2: you draw the line. For Gobin, there's little difference between
Speaker 2: taking money from Norway or taking money from say Axon. Today,
Speaker 2: the company has donated seven million dollars to EWACRAMA through
Speaker 2: its foundation.
Speaker 7: Guyana is part of a very important landscape known as
Speaker 7: the Guyana Shield. It's actually one of the last remaining
Speaker 7: intact force ecosystems.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 7: This space offers a great opportunity for conservation.
Speaker 2: Excellent's CEE may not have visited Euacrama yet, but it's
Speaker 2: marketing team sure has. They've been busy making videos there
Speaker 2: to promote the company's commitment to conservation in Guyana.
Speaker 7: We really need to nurture it and ensure that we
Speaker 7: have this re future generations to come, even while we
Speaker 7: use it in a wise way.
Speaker 2: Gobin is well aware of the optics and how people
Speaker 2: might be irged by a conservation organization receiving millions of
Speaker 2: dollars in donations from an oil company.
Speaker 6: And yes, the obvious question is, you know, should we
Speaker 6: be taking money from the oil company. And my question
Speaker 6: to that is okay, oil will be there. We continue
Speaker 6: to say, you know, if you read the papers, if
Speaker 6: you read the chitro, you'll see, you know, exon stripping Ayana.
Speaker 6: The question is if we've accepted that they're stripping for
Speaker 6: a moment, they're giving you something back. It could be more,
Speaker 6: but they're giving you something back. And if they didn't
Speaker 6: give you, they would get knocked for not giving something
Speaker 6: back when they're giving No, the question is should you
Speaker 6: be accepting we are not advocacy. We're not advocates. Don't
Speaker 6: we run a rainforest. We don't get involved in politics.
Speaker 6: But we have to take care of all people. And
Speaker 6: if somebody is saying, here's a grant, you can do
Speaker 6: capacity building and training, you can immove the livelhoods of Guyanese.
Speaker 6: You could do all kinds of things, why should we
Speaker 6: say no.
Speaker 8: Dan's not stupid. Dan just doesn't tell. As long as
Speaker 8: there's money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, remember Melinda Jenkie, the lawyer trying to stop the
Speaker 2: offshore drilling project in court. For Jinkie, there is no
Speaker 2: way to separate the money from its corporate influence. There
Speaker 2: are always strings attached.
Speaker 8: I find a lot of people in this conservation sector
Speaker 8: in this country. It's not that interested in conservation, but
Speaker 8: they are very interested in being given grants to do
Speaker 8: what they term conservation work, which generally conserves nothing.
Speaker 1: How does it concern nothing?
Speaker 8: What do they do? Wf were They did the thing
Speaker 8: off Surguyana and came back in rapturous about the wonderful
Speaker 8: marine wildlife we had and that it's possible to do
Speaker 8: oil and protect marine wildlife. I'm not entirely sure what
Speaker 8: planet we can do that on, but it's not this one.
Speaker 2: Pri But Exxon is dropping more than just money.
Speaker 8: They are allowed to dump four thousand barrels of sewage
Speaker 8: into the ocean every day. So four thousand barrels of
Speaker 8: sewage every day adds up to, over the life of
Speaker 8: the project, one point two billion gallons of sewage in
Speaker 8: our pristine ocean. There's one point two billion bottles of
Speaker 8: oil in that particular field, so we're getting roughly again
Speaker 8: the ship for every bottel of oil they take out.
Speaker 2: Exxon's money has those same steel ropes attached as other
Speaker 2: international donors, but instead of requiring good governance and a
Speaker 2: crackdown on political corruption, they're asking Euochrama staff to appear
Speaker 2: in marketing videos and say that Exon is supporting important
Speaker 2: conservation efforts. Some might say they want to greenwash.
Speaker 6: This is not a personal benefit. This is a benefit
Speaker 6: to Iwokrama, it's community partners and to the nation of Guyana.
Speaker 6: And as I said, we could probably get some more.
Speaker 6: But at the end of the day, you know what
Speaker 6: the recognition is. I mean, it's something that I don't
Speaker 6: think people on average realize. Exxon Mobile bet five or
Speaker 6: billion dollars without knowing what was there. Shell left. Shell
Speaker 6: was partner, and they left a few years after because
Speaker 6: there was nothing.
Speaker 2: Bobin is referring to the original contract that Exon had
Speaker 2: with Guyana, which was signed in nineteen ninety nine. At
Speaker 2: the time, Exon's exploration partner was Shell, but after the
Speaker 2: two started exploring an earnest in two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: and didn't find anything for a few years, Shell left
Speaker 2: that partnership.
Speaker 6: Now shouldn't they be given some kind of what recognition
Speaker 6: for that investment in Guyana? Because if there was nothing there,
Speaker 6: they would have walked away with a five billion dollar loss.
Speaker 6: They stuck it out. And I'm not advocating for them.
Speaker 6: I have no interest. Actually, I would not like to
Speaker 6: see ail out there. But the reality is you look
Speaker 6: at the way healthcare system, look at ouray education system.
Speaker 6: Guyanese want to go to Harvard guy and wanted to
Speaker 6: go with the year better school's bet the healthcare, So
Speaker 6: who's paying for that?
Speaker 2: We heard this from a lot of people in the
Speaker 2: conservation space, this idea that oil is obviously not great
Speaker 2: for the environment, but what's done is done, and they
Speaker 2: may as well use the oil money to further conservation efforts.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to hear from the one person everyone
Speaker 2: I spoke with in Guyana told me to talk to
Speaker 2: about conservation. Hi, I'm sorry, I'm early, so okay jet.
Speaker 2: He reminds me of my not and that our June
Speaker 2: runs the Guyana Marine Conservation Society. She shared some similarly
Speaker 2: contradictory views while we were walking around her neighborhood near
Speaker 2: the coast in Georgetown.
Speaker 4: Oleander gardens are oleander plants, the orleander flowers, and this
Speaker 4: area is called oleander gardens. But because of all the
Speaker 4: old homes being bought out and demolished and replaced by
Speaker 4: these high rising apartments, we now have chamberget Xon as
Speaker 4: our neighbors. So I always tell people you are now
Speaker 4: coming into Oily and the Gardens, which is you know,
Speaker 4: a bastardization of or beautiful oleander flower. So welcome to
Speaker 4: Oily and the Gardens.
Speaker 2: But well, our June seems not so thrilled the idea
Speaker 2: that her neighborhood has been turned into condos central for
Speaker 2: foreign oil execs. She's also happy that Guyanese property owners
Speaker 2: and developers are benefiting from that change.
Speaker 1: Now these are three. Each apartment has its own to
Speaker 1: the bath.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So there was those a couple of five that was
Speaker 1: in the US for a month. Wow. And they're all
Speaker 1: Guyanese business people.
Speaker 2: And then renting out mostly to Yeah, it's all oil
Speaker 2: and gas.
Speaker 1: But then why was saying that they.
Speaker 4: Carved back in terms of local content. They gave a
Speaker 4: Guyanese opportunities in the real estate market, you know. So
Speaker 4: this is Tracy's ten apartments there and another five year
Speaker 4: all of them are already rented out.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And I went to school with her in Barbados.
Speaker 4: So lots of young people like our age as well,
Speaker 4: are getting opportunities to become you know, food caterers, service providers,
Speaker 4: logistics providers.
Speaker 2: Right because they have to hire they have our June
Speaker 2: says when she first heard Axon was coming to Guyana,
Speaker 2: she was worried.
Speaker 4: I didn't know much about Exxon other than when there
Speaker 4: was that New Yorker article that basically was, you know,
Speaker 4: exposing their culture and reality of funding climate change denial
Speaker 4: denial campaigns. That was the first time Exon came in
Speaker 4: my radar. And and and to me, if you're your
Speaker 4: you know, top tier of your company is doing something
Speaker 4: as as insidious as that it was, it was terrible.
Speaker 4: It was terrible for me because if you're, you know,
Speaker 4: funding climate change denial campaigns, how could you be considered
Speaker 4: environmentally responsible? So having all of the technology is one thing,
Speaker 4: but that technology is useless if your culture is one
Speaker 4: of of de sit.
Speaker 2: She's also very clear eyed about the climate tax Guyana
Speaker 2: is already experiencing and the role that fossil fuels play
Speaker 2: and exacerbating those impacts.
Speaker 4: And appeared that's supposed to be a tri season. You're
Speaker 4: still having torrential downpour. You're having short torrential downport. I
Speaker 4: will flood your city and in minutes. You know, all
Speaker 4: of that, you're seeing that that that that was never
Speaker 4: what our weather conditioned to be like in the past
Speaker 4: and shell each way I worked, we had in in
Speaker 4: cases parts of the beach we were losing like ninety
Speaker 4: feet of beach per month. That is sort of unprecedented
Speaker 4: erosion in terms of the rapidity of that as actually
Speaker 4: as a result of that that that effect the community
Speaker 4: of two hundred and eighty members of them had to
Speaker 4: relocate inland to higher ground. So that was what in
Speaker 4: my and I always refer to as my first experience of
Speaker 4: climate change refugees.
Speaker 2: But she doesn't necessarily see any of that as a
Speaker 2: reason not to drill for oil offshore. She believes Exon
Speaker 2: can and will do better in Guyana with respect to
Speaker 2: environmental protections.
Speaker 4: So for sure, I think Exxon has an opportunity of goal,
Speaker 4: an opportunity to do what is right by the environment,
Speaker 4: and if they don't, well, you know, we'll call them out.
Speaker 4: And I think as well to the government also has
Speaker 4: to hold it Exon accomfortable because Exxon gets away with
Speaker 4: slackness if it's allowed by the administration.
Speaker 2: And she sees whatever environmental degradation oil drilling might bring
Speaker 2: as an acceptable trade off for money that could lift
Speaker 2: Guyanese out of poverty. Although she was eventually sent to
Speaker 2: boarding school and taught to fly planes by her father.
Speaker 2: Our June grew up in the indigenous village that her
Speaker 2: mother was from, and she saw there up close the
Speaker 2: poverty that a lot of Guyanese citizens still deal with today.
Speaker 4: Guana it was a very poor country. And growing up
Speaker 4: with my Amoronnian grandmother in a river in community where
Speaker 4: there was a lot of poverty as well, including workin'
Speaker 4: on shell Beach where you know people that eat sea
Speaker 4: dartlet meat and eggs exists. Seeing poverty was a part
Speaker 4: of my reality.
Speaker 2: Shell Beach became the first place Our June's organization worked
Speaker 2: to conserve. Today she works with local residents there to
Speaker 2: protect the turtles that they once had to eat to survive.
Speaker 2: But she's also seen poverty force young people in the
Speaker 2: area into sex work just to access daily necessities.
Speaker 4: Seeing young girls who had no economic opportunities and would
Speaker 4: have to have survival sex to be able to buy
Speaker 4: an underwear or buy a bra, or to eat as
Speaker 4: part of my reality. So in terms of seeing, you know,
Speaker 4: this country being blessed with so much natural resources, including
Speaker 4: the recently discovered and produce oil, it made me. It
Speaker 4: makes me realize that. Look, if you have, you know,
Speaker 4: abundant natural sources, and you could use those natural resources
Speaker 4: in a very responsible manner to help to help lift
Speaker 4: your people out of poverty. That's what I support.
Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense. The looming question, of course,
Speaker 2: is whether it will actually lift people out of poverty,
Speaker 2: and whether it will do so before it destroys any
Speaker 2: of the other natural resources that Guyanese people depend on.
Speaker 2: That's where Janki, the attorney we heard from before, thinks
Speaker 2: a lot of Guyanese people are engaging in magical thinking.
Speaker 5: The global Norse has basically broken the global climate system
Speaker 5: as a result of greenhouse gas pollution, and I think
Speaker 5: we should stop talking about emissions and call it what
Speaker 5: it is, which is pollution from fossil fuels. It is
Speaker 5: incredibly stupid for anybody to say, well, because you did
Speaker 5: something bad and broke it, we now have a right
Speaker 5: to do something bad and break it even further. The
Speaker 5: global climate system is precisely what it says, it's a
Speaker 5: global climate system. The idea that more money is going
Speaker 5: to make things better again it.
Speaker 2: Is also false.
Speaker 5: Gen is not a poor country, gain is an extremely
Speaker 5: rich country. It's the people who are poor, and they're
Speaker 5: poor because it's the same set of people that have
Speaker 5: governed this country and run it into the ground. So
Speaker 5: the idea that more money will make any difference is
Speaker 5: not based on any evidence whatsoever. All the evidence points
Speaker 5: to the government, whichever government is, whichever party is in power,
Speaker 5: it doesn't really matter. What it points to is squandering
Speaker 5: of national income. And I think it's disingenuous to be
Speaker 5: claiming to be a conservation organization and at the same
Speaker 5: time trying to make allowances for the fossil fuel sector,
Speaker 5: which is destroying the planet. Now, a marine conservation society
Speaker 5: supposedly cares about turtles. They actually started off as a
Speaker 5: gan a marine turtle conservation society.
Speaker 2: That's the organization that on our June runs.
Speaker 5: You only have to look at what oil does to
Speaker 5: a turtle to realize that saying on the one hand
Speaker 5: that you want to protect turtles and saying on the
Speaker 5: other hand that fossil fuels can be beneficial in some
Speaker 5: way are to completely contradictory positions. It's one or the other.
Speaker 5: Either you protect the ocean or you support fossil fuels.
Speaker 5: There isn't any middle ground.
Speaker 2: And Ewercrama Dean Gobin is still hopeful that selling ecosystem services,
Speaker 2: both to oil companies and to other international buyers is
Speaker 2: a potential path out of poverty for Guyana that keeps
Speaker 2: the focus on conservation. When he talks about it, he
Speaker 2: sounds very similar to Jankie.
Speaker 6: Actually, so ecosystem services would be as very common as
Speaker 6: carbon which people speak of as tourism. It's a service
Speaker 6: from the ecosystem, the fires, the environment. But then you
Speaker 6: get into the carbon hydrology, water major ecosystem services. They
Speaker 6: say the next wars will be fought over water. Unfortunately
Speaker 6: a lot of people have recognized forests for these ecosystem services,
Speaker 6: but no one could put their value in it. Now,
Speaker 6: if I got the loan from the band, I would
Speaker 6: say we have arrived as far as managers, and I've
Speaker 6: always believed we're in the conservation business. This is not
Speaker 6: any fluffy thing. This is a business. You have a
Speaker 6: car business, you have a stationary business, you sell hardware.
Speaker 6: I sell ecosystem services.
Speaker 5: Give Guyana the respect and the admiration for being a
Speaker 5: carbon sink and starting that dialogue about how do we
Speaker 5: actually make sure that this country stays as a carbon
Speaker 5: sink Because that's the most important thing for the planet.
Speaker 5: If every country was a carbon sink, we would not
Speaker 5: be in the mess we are in now.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 5: This is where people need to stand up and say,
Speaker 5: there is a better future for Guyana, and we can
Speaker 5: help you to do that. Get rid of these loans,
Speaker 5: get rid of the debt, Stop lending money to governments
Speaker 5: who then squander it and burden the population with it.
Speaker 5: But simply pay us the people for that carbon sink service.
Speaker 5: Pay us the people to create a marine protected area
Speaker 5: over our exclusive economic zone and protect everything that's there.
Speaker 5: That's good enough.
Speaker 2: The key difference between the two is that Gobin sees
Speaker 2: no problem with selling those services to Exon or its
Speaker 2: partners to offset the emissions they're generating by drilling for
Speaker 2: oil offshore. But for all of his faith in Guyana's
Speaker 2: valuable ecosystem services and his acceptance of the oil industry
Speaker 2: as a sort of necessary evil, Gobin also realizes that
Speaker 2: a catastrophic oil spill would ruin all of it. Is
Speaker 2: there any concern that something like an oil spill, for example,
Speaker 2: if it was big enough, could impact the ecosystem services?
Speaker 6: Definitely? Definitely, Yeah, And that's the worry you know, the
Speaker 6: thing is, I wouldn't sit here and say it wouldn't.
Speaker 6: I would sit here and says it can't happen. Yeah,
Speaker 6: because chances are it's going to happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of evidence around that, the
Speaker 2: data speaks for.
Speaker 6: So you know, again, the best the next best thing
Speaker 6: to that is what planning and planning plan ahead. So
Speaker 6: this is going to happen. It has happened before, it
Speaker 6: will happen again. So if it happened, so I know,
Speaker 6: government is very actively working with the companies to look
Speaker 6: at plan to put in place mechanisms, emergency mechanisms to
Speaker 6: save the coastline. And I'm comfortable that the board, government
Speaker 6: and the companies are spending enough resources to be able
Speaker 6: to deal with it.
Speaker 2: But even as the country starts to build the skills
Speaker 2: and resources required to deal with oil, another environmental danger
Speaker 2: is looming.
Speaker 3: We are outlining the gas to shore project and what
Speaker 3: it will bring to our country.
Speaker 2: That's Guyana's President Irfan Ali announcing a new project, one
Speaker 2: that's separate from the offshore drilling and governed by different
Speaker 2: contracts and arrangements entirely the gas to energy project. Now,
Speaker 2: remember managing gas has been something of a problem for
Speaker 2: the oil companies since the beginning of their production in Guyana.
Speaker 2: It's a waste product they're supposed to be managing. Up
Speaker 2: until late twenty twenty two, that mostly meant burning it
Speaker 2: off what's called called flaring. But now that they've redesigned
Speaker 2: their gas compressor, Excellon says it's back to reinjecting the
Speaker 2: gas underground. However, the company has also repositioned gas from
Speaker 2: a byproduct to another revenue stream. Now it's being presented
Speaker 2: as a huge gift to Guyana.
Speaker 3: The gas in this phase comes to the government and
Speaker 3: people of Ghana free of costs, free of costs.
Speaker 2: And as both oil companies and even some large environmental
Speaker 2: groups have done all over the world, the gas is
Speaker 2: being presented as a bridge to energy transition, a key
Speaker 2: part of the President's low carbon development strategy.
Speaker 3: We are taking the issue of environment and climate seriously.
Speaker 3: Natural gas is far less polluting than fossil fuel and
Speaker 3: a supply of energy, so this project also is part
Speaker 3: of our climate Resilien's plan structural transformation. This project allows
Speaker 3: us to have structural transformation.
Speaker 2: And now it's time to talk about pultering again. Because,
Speaker 2: of course, if your problem is methane emissions, it's helpful
Speaker 2: to focus everyone's attention on carbon emissions. And it's true.
Speaker 2: Gas does emit less CO two than coal or oil,
Speaker 2: but it emits a whole lot of methane, which is
Speaker 2: a greenhouse gas that's about eighty times more potent than
Speaker 2: CO two over twenty years. And methane isn't just released
Speaker 2: when people burn gas. It's emitted all along the way,
Speaker 2: when it's extracted, when it's refined, when it's transported, and
Speaker 2: when it's burnt. The industry refers to this as methane leaks,
Speaker 2: which sounds like an accident oopsie, But studies are piling
Speaker 2: up that show it's just par for the course when
Speaker 2: you're using gas for energy. In the past decade, scientists
Speaker 2: have discovered not only that all of our existing gas
Speaker 2: infrastructure emits a lot more methane than anyone previously thought,
Speaker 2: and the whole lot more than the industry has ever admitted,
Speaker 2: but also that it's worse for the atmosphere. It's also
Speaker 2: really short lived, which is good news. That means if
Speaker 2: we could dramatically reduce methane emissions now, it would buy
Speaker 2: us some time to reduce all of the other greenhouse
Speaker 2: gas emissions. But instead of doing any of those things,
Speaker 2: the industry is pushing the world in the opposite direction,
Speaker 2: most recently using the shortage of gas in Europe caused
Speaker 2: by Russia's invasion of Ukraine as justification to lock in
Speaker 2: gas for decades. Gas often gets talked about as being
Speaker 2: a bridge to renewable energy, something we can just use
Speaker 2: until there's enough renewables on the grid, or that can
Speaker 2: help to stabilize solar and wind sources. But what we've
Speaker 2: seen in reality over the past twenty years is gas
Speaker 2: being baked in as the dominant energy source. It's a
Speaker 2: bridge to nowhere. And on top of all that, in Guyana,
Speaker 2: there's the fact that there's actually a lot more gas
Speaker 2: being produced than the country could ever possibly use for energy.
Speaker 2: The fifty million cubic feet of gas that they're bringing
Speaker 2: we only need for our electricity.
Speaker 4: We only need about thirty.
Speaker 2: But that's the first phase fifty.
Speaker 3: They're going to be bringing one hundred and twenty million.
Speaker 2: So it's four times what you actually use.
Speaker 4: And they are consistent, well, we need to do something
Speaker 4: with the gas, because.
Speaker 6: If we don't do anything with the gas, then.
Speaker 4: Eggxon would have no choice.
Speaker 2: But to flare it. That's our story next time Light
Speaker 2: Sweet Crude is a Drilled and Damages co production. Both
Speaker 2: shows are Critical Frequency originals. Our editor and senior producer
Speaker 2: is Sarah Ventry. Sound design, mixing and mastering by Martin
Speaker 2: saltz Ostwick, Our fact checker is Anna Poujel Mazzini, and
Speaker 2: our first amendment attorney is James Wheaton. The show is
Speaker 2: reported and written by me Amy Westerveldt, additional reporting by
Speaker 2: Keanna Wilberg in Guyana and Antonio Juhas in DC. We
Speaker 2: had additional assistants in Guyana from Jamal Thomas, Salvador Deakerre's
Speaker 2: Wilderness Explorers and the staff at Kaiman House. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Michael McCrystal for his help as well. Our theme
Speaker 2: song is Bird in the Hand by Foreknown sing, A
Speaker 2: simple song was originally written by Sly and the Family Stone.
Speaker 2: It's performed in this episode by the Young Ones of Guyana,
Speaker 2: licensed by BME Music. Additional music by Martin zaltz Ostwick.
Speaker 2: Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. Marketing is handled by
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Speaker 2: wonderful folks at Tink Media, Lauren Passel, Ariel Nissenblatt, and
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