Speaker 1: We interrupt this program to bring you a breaking near story.
Speaker 2: US oil giant Exxon strikes oil in Guyana.
Speaker 3: Now one of the prominent election issues in Guyana has
Speaker 3: been the country's oil exploration efforts.
Speaker 4: They were rumors swirling that Ganna had found oil.
Speaker 3: Sound like almost all its neighbors, Guyana is not yet
Speaker 3: an oil producer, but last week Eggxon Mobil announced it
Speaker 3: had discovered oil off the coast.
Speaker 5: In May twenty fifteen, Exon Mobil announced that it had
Speaker 5: struck oil off the coast of the small South American
Speaker 5: country of Guyana. And in Guyana, this was a big deal,
Speaker 5: And then just a couple months later, Exon was making
Speaker 5: headlines for another reason entirely. An investigation is underway into Exon,
Speaker 5: the huge oil company married research about the effects of
Speaker 5: climate change. Reports suggests more than thirty years ago, Exon's
Speaker 5: own scientists were taking climate change projections into account in
Speaker 5: its operational plans.
Speaker 4: Exon was on the cutting edge of science.
Speaker 5: They wanted to be on the cutting edge of science.
Speaker 4: Forty years ago, on climate.
Speaker 5: Change journalists at Inside Climate News, the La Times, and
Speaker 5: Columbia Journalism School published dozens of internal documents that showed
Speaker 5: that Exon Mobile had been warned by its own scientists
Speaker 5: about climate change back in the nineteen seventies, and yet
Speaker 5: had worked hard to keep the world from ever hearing
Speaker 5: those warnings or taking them seriously. Exon rushed to defend
Speaker 5: its record. It criticized the journalists. It ran tons of
Speaker 5: social media ads and videos that would pop up every
Speaker 5: time you searched Exon climate on Google. It claimed the
Speaker 5: whole story was part of an organized plat against it.
Speaker 5: But it was hard to deny the hundreds of internal
Speaker 5: documents that the company itself had put in its corporate
Speaker 5: archive at the University of Texas Library. It was all there,
Speaker 5: in black and white, predictions of warming temperatures, rising seas,
Speaker 5: fires and hurricanes, models and charts that showed exactly what
Speaker 5: we're dealing with today. Story after story painted Exon as
Speaker 5: the world's climate villain. And it was at this moment
Speaker 5: that Guyana, a country on the frontlines of the global
Speaker 5: climate crisis and one of the few South American nations
Speaker 5: to stay out of oil throughout its history, emerged as
Speaker 5: a new oil state thanks to Exxon. As time went on,
Speaker 5: Exon began projecting that oil from Guyana would make up
Speaker 5: around twenty five percent of its total global output, so
Speaker 5: to recap. The same year Exxon was exposed for blocking
Speaker 5: climate policy for decades, they decided to start a whole
Speaker 5: new project doing offshore drilling in Guyana, a project so
Speaker 5: large that it's what climate experts call a carbon bomb.
Speaker 5: Knowing everything they know about climate change and the role
Speaker 5: of fossil fuels planet, knowing the inevitability of oil spills
Speaker 5: and flaring and things going wrong. Not in the nineteen
Speaker 5: seventies when they were just learning about these things, but
Speaker 5: now when they know so much. That's when they decided
Speaker 5: to expand into Guyana.
Speaker 4: One of the first things we found it was who
Speaker 4: was this company that found this oil? And they said, oh,
Speaker 4: it was EEPGLSO Exploration and Production Gata Limited, and that
Speaker 4: company is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobile Corporation.
Speaker 5: Keanu Wilberg reports on the oil and gas industry for
Speaker 5: one of the country's top papers, Kit News.
Speaker 4: And so I said, okay, we need to let people know, yes,
Speaker 4: we found oil, but who are we really dealing with.
Speaker 4: Who is this company? What's his track record? We don't
Speaker 4: know anything about it. Let's get into it.
Speaker 5: I'm Amy Westervelt, and I'm a journalist who's been covering
Speaker 5: the fossil fuel industry for twenty years, so it was
Speaker 5: a big surprise to me that Keana and her colleagues
Speaker 5: had not heard of Exxon Mobile before this. In the US,
Speaker 5: of course, they're a household name, but for journalists in particular,
Speaker 5: they have a reputation. For me and every journalist I
Speaker 5: know who's ever done an excellon story, weird shit just
Speaker 5: happens when you're reporting on this company. When I was
Speaker 5: interviewing those former excellent scientists I mentioned before, the ones
Speaker 5: that had done all that climate research back in the
Speaker 5: seventies and eighties, every time I traveled, half my reservations
Speaker 5: would somehow wind up changed or canceled. It actually happened
Speaker 5: when I was reporting on this story too. On my
Speaker 5: way to Guyana, I got a message just before my
Speaker 5: flight that my hotel room in Georgetown had been canceled.
Speaker 5: I called our senior producer and editor, Sarah Ventry about
Speaker 5: it to let her know.
Speaker 6: Good morning, Sarah. I woke up to a fun little
Speaker 6: surprise that Marriott had.
Speaker 5: Canceled my hotel reservation tonight.
Speaker 6: I totally forgot that, like every time I go somewhere
Speaker 6: to report on Exxon, this happens. We asked Keana if
Speaker 6: intimidation from either the oil companies or the government.
Speaker 5: Ever makes her think twice about her beat.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Absolutely. I remember uh watching this documentary about how
Speaker 4: citizens of Papua New Guinea died when they were pushing
Speaker 4: for an oil and gas project in a particular area.
Speaker 4: People who were protesting against it started disappearing. But I
Speaker 4: am I am very very much aware of the dangers
Speaker 4: of reporting on the oil and gas sector.
Speaker 5: Those dangers have only increased in the few years since
Speaker 5: Guyana became an oil country. For decades now, the fossil
Speaker 5: fuel industry's story has been that oil equals development and prosperity, equality, stability,
Speaker 5: a better quality of life. As the world's fossil fuel
Speaker 5: companies race to tap the last of the planet's oil reserves,
Speaker 5: we have a chance to examine that promise up close
Speaker 5: in real time this season Life and Death in the
Speaker 5: world's fastest growing economy. The purpose of an oil company
Speaker 5: is to make money. They have no other purpose.
Speaker 7: If you have abundant natural source and you could use
Speaker 7: those natural resources in a very responsible manner to help
Speaker 7: lift your people out of poverty. That's what I support.
Speaker 5: It's really extraordinary the leverage the industry has over the country,
Speaker 5: and it's inexplicable the amount.
Speaker 8: A number of attacks we have received from members of
Speaker 8: the government. It shows that the government is not ready
Speaker 8: to accommodate persons who are willing to speak out.
Speaker 9: One point two billion gallons of suite in our Christine Ocean,
Speaker 9: so will be getting roughly again.
Speaker 5: The ship for every battel of oil they take out.
Speaker 5: That's the deal. In a nutshell.
Speaker 2: I thought it was hard to report on the CIA,
Speaker 2: and I came to understand that Exon was far more
Speaker 2: difficult and a little bit scarier even.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Light Sweet Crude, a special crossover season of
Speaker 5: Drilled and Damages. Stay with us.
Speaker 4: My lifelong dream since since growing up was to be
Speaker 4: a teacher.
Speaker 5: This is Keana Wilberg, who we heard from before. She
Speaker 5: was one of my first connections in Guyana. Actually, I
Speaker 5: originally hired her to help do some interviews and some
Speaker 5: on the ground recording when we couldn't travel to Guyana
Speaker 5: because of COVID. But the more I got to know her,
Speaker 5: I realized that she wasn't just helping us to tell
Speaker 5: this story. She was a big part of it.
Speaker 4: And I didn't get to fulfill that dream because I
Speaker 4: was told that I was too young and the boys
Speaker 4: in the class would not take me seriously as a teacher.
Speaker 4: So I said, Okay, what's the next thing that I
Speaker 4: wanted to do, and that would be writing. I loved
Speaker 4: her and I love to pray as well, so I
Speaker 4: remember praying and I said, you know, God, if you
Speaker 4: channel me in the direction.
Speaker 9: To get a job that allows me to do what
Speaker 9: I love, so that allows me to write, I'm going
Speaker 9: to give one thousand percent of myself every singly.
Speaker 4: The next day, I.
Speaker 5: Got this job. This job was working as a reporter
Speaker 5: at one of the country's largest newspapers, Kit News. She
Speaker 5: was young, nineteen maybe twenty, and she had no idea
Speaker 5: what to expect. She stayed up all night before her
Speaker 5: first day studying the paper and its writers.
Speaker 10: So I had a little notebook and I wrote down
Speaker 10: all of the topics that they paid attention to in
Speaker 10: health and crime and education, because I wasn't sure where
Speaker 10: they would put me or what they would ask me.
Speaker 5: She even picked out the perfect first day of work outfit,
Speaker 5: just like you used to do the night before your
Speaker 5: first day of school.
Speaker 10: I remember having this black jacket with gold buttons and
Speaker 10: matching green inner top, the black pants with green shoes,
Speaker 10: and when I got to wear I thought that I
Speaker 10: looked so good.
Speaker 5: But it turned into one of her first lessons about
Speaker 5: navigating Guyana's political landscape as a journalist.
Speaker 10: I got to work the first day and I was
Speaker 10: reprimanded for it because green and black are party colors.
Speaker 10: It's the two colors of one of the major political
Speaker 10: parties in the country. If you go out there as
Speaker 10: a reporter, they automatically ask you, oh, are you are
Speaker 10: representative of this party.
Speaker 5: That's a big deal in Guyana, where politics are tense
Speaker 5: and racialized.
Speaker 4: You have predominantly Blocks and you have predominantly Indians, and
Speaker 4: they are parties that represent those interests.
Speaker 11: Leading up to elections, you will see both sides reminding
Speaker 11: of things that happen five years ago, ten years ago.
Speaker 4: Fifty years ago. You will hear them beating these racist
Speaker 4: drums like every single time it's leading up to elections.
Speaker 4: And so unfortunately, even at this media entity, when it
Speaker 4: gets to that time, you see some people say good afternoon,
Speaker 4: and some people don't.
Speaker 5: According to Keana, oil drilling has exacerbated the problem.
Speaker 4: It's more cut throat and there's no apology. There's no
Speaker 4: apology for it. There's no care for window dressing anymore.
Speaker 4: It's going to be violet, it's going to be disrespectful.
Speaker 4: It's oil is just making this the politics. It's getting toxic.
Speaker 4: It's written an extremely toxic level.
Speaker 5: That's pretty concerning in a country with a history of
Speaker 5: political battles turning violent. The fact that politics are turning
Speaker 5: ugly in the wake of oil doesn't exactly bode well
Speaker 5: for stability in Guyana. Americans are of course, no strangers
Speaker 5: to divisive, toxic, racialized, or even violent politics either. But
Speaker 5: to give you just one example of just how bad
Speaker 5: it's starting to get in Guyana, Keana told us about
Speaker 5: a fight over one piece of oil related legislation that
Speaker 5: actually ended up in a wrestling match. Seriously, some politicians
Speaker 5: ended up rolling around on the floor of the National Assembly.
Speaker 12: Real the thing now on presidented vulgarity in the National
Speaker 12: Assembly Bana.
Speaker 4: The opposition resorted to whistling, stealing the mace and that instrument.
Speaker 4: If it's removed from there, you cannot pass a law.
Speaker 4: So the opposition tried to steal the mace so that
Speaker 4: they can pass it.
Speaker 7: And it was.
Speaker 4: A tug of war between the members of the opposition
Speaker 4: and the parliamentary officials and their images online with a
Speaker 4: parliamentary official lyne on the ground hugging the mace so
Speaker 4: that it cannot be stolen from him.
Speaker 5: That sort of thing has been happening more and more
Speaker 5: in the past couple of years as Excellent started actually
Speaker 5: producing barrels of oil. Suddenly the potential for oil profits
Speaker 5: has become real money in government accounts. Roads are being built,
Speaker 5: government programs are being announced. Guyana's capital, Georgetown, it's an
Speaker 5: oil boomtown now that caters to foreigners in the oil business.
Speaker 5: There are high rise hotels springing up all over the place.
Speaker 5: It's impossible to get a reservation at the most popular
Speaker 5: restaurant in town. Old colonial homes near the waterfront have
Speaker 5: been torn down and replaced by modern apartment buildings or
Speaker 5: condos where oil execs from Houston rotate in and out.
Speaker 5: Competition for power and wealth has intensified, turning up the
Speaker 5: heat on long simmering political, ethnic and class resentments. When
Speaker 5: that first announcement was made in twenty fifteen. It was
Speaker 5: just the earliest hint of what was to come. Exon
Speaker 5: had figured out that there was oil off Guyana's coast,
Speaker 5: but it needed to understand exactly how much how accessible
Speaker 5: it was. Once that was determined, it had to commission
Speaker 5: unusually large and complex offshore rigs to get at the oil.
Speaker 5: These were not your standard offshore platforms. Exon needed to
Speaker 5: be able not only to drill in extremely deep water,
Speaker 5: but also to store large quantities of oil at sea
Speaker 5: and ship barrels directly from the middle of the ocean.
Speaker 5: It takes at least two years to build these things.
Speaker 5: They're called floating production, storage and Offloading vessels, or as
Speaker 5: we heard a lot of people call them FPSOs. They
Speaker 5: cost up to three billion dollars each and they can
Speaker 5: take up to a year just to install and get going.
Speaker 5: So it makes sense that while Exon announced that it
Speaker 5: had discovered oil in Guyana in twenty fifteen, it didn't
Speaker 5: actually produce its first barrel there until twenty nineteen. When
Speaker 5: that happened, the country's president at the time, David Granger,
Speaker 5: was so thrilled he declared the day a national holiday.
Speaker 2: Guy needs I should issue a proclamation declaring the twentieth
Speaker 2: of December as National Petroleum Day.
Speaker 5: In those four years from the discovery of oil to
Speaker 5: the production of it, Keanu Wilberg set herself the task
Speaker 5: of learning everything she possibly could about the industry and
Speaker 5: about the company that Guyana was partnering with.
Speaker 4: I distinctly remember I said, Okay, you know what, I
Speaker 4: don't know anything about oil and gas. I'm editor in
Speaker 4: chief at the TAME. Adam Harris said, you know, I
Speaker 4: have a book somewhere at home about Exxon.
Speaker 5: The book was one of the all time masterpieces ever
Speaker 5: written about Exon Private Empire.
Speaker 2: I'm Steve Call and I am the author of Private Empire,
Speaker 2: Exxon Mobile, and American Power.
Speaker 5: Steve Call is also an investigative journalist for The New Yorker.
Speaker 2: I thought it was hard to report on the CIA,
Speaker 2: and I came to understand that Exon was far more
Speaker 2: difficult and a little bit scarier. Even I joked with
Speaker 2: my colleagues that, you know, if I disappeared, like if
Speaker 2: some van pulled up beside me on the street and
Speaker 2: I was bundled away and they never saw me again,
Speaker 2: that it wouldn't be al Qaeda, which I had reported
Speaker 2: on it wouldn't be the CIA, which I had reported,
Speaker 2: I'd probably be excellent. They have that way of creeping
Speaker 2: people out of intimidation actually, and it's it's a strategy,
Speaker 2: and they're very practiced at it and effective at it.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of power and resources with which
Speaker 2: to intimidate people.
Speaker 5: Keanu photocopied Calls book for her colleagues. Reading it, she
Speaker 5: could tell she was signing up for a big challenge,
Speaker 5: but it wasn't all on her shoulders. Her paper, Kitter
Speaker 5: News knew that Guyana getting into the oil business was
Speaker 5: a big deal, so they created an oil and gas
Speaker 5: desk and put five journalists on it, some for oil,
Speaker 5: some for gas. They all read those photocopies of Private
Speaker 5: Empire and then came up with questions they wanted answers for.
Speaker 4: Everyone was armed with pencils and exercise books, notebooks, and
Speaker 4: we were writing on all the questions that we want
Speaker 4: to ask, that we want to find out and do
Speaker 4: research a book.
Speaker 5: As they did their research, they would publish it in
Speaker 5: a series of weekly articles.
Speaker 4: And we started out with everything you need to know
Speaker 4: about Excel Mobile, and some of our stories looked at
Speaker 4: the environmental issues concerns that countries civil society groups had
Speaker 4: about exelmobiles operations.
Speaker 5: One of those concerns was, unsurprisingly, climate change and the
Speaker 5: extent to which a massive new oil project would be
Speaker 5: exacerbating a problem that the country and the world is
Speaker 5: already facing. Dianese President your Fanali has painted sort of
Speaker 5: a robbing Peter to pay Paul picture, claiming that oil
Speaker 5: money will help Guyana pay for the cost of adapting
Speaker 5: to climate change, never mind that it will also exacerbate
Speaker 5: the problem. And Guyana's capital, Georgetown, is below sea level already.
Speaker 5: In fact, it was already below sea level when it
Speaker 5: was built. Back in the late seventeen hundreds. The Dutch
Speaker 5: colonized the area and engineered a canal system for Georgetown,
Speaker 5: similar to those they built in the Netherlands.
Speaker 12: Now there are hundreds and hundreds of these in Guyana,
Speaker 12: all along the coast. So you have the sea wall,
Speaker 12: but they're breaks in the sea wall all along that
Speaker 12: has these openings. That has a sluice, so it's like
Speaker 12: a gate that opens and closes, so at low tide
Speaker 12: it's open to let water out. At high tide it's
Speaker 12: closed to keep the seawater out.
Speaker 5: Salvador to Carries was born and raised in Guyana. Today
Speaker 5: he worked as a tour guide there.
Speaker 12: And right now even there are parts of the east coast,
Speaker 12: and even here during spring tides you should see the
Speaker 12: waves coming over the top of the wall. So any
Speaker 12: kind of rise in sea level, we're in trouble. How
Speaker 12: much do you keep building this wall up? At some
Speaker 12: point we're going to have to think about moving, and
Speaker 12: the government is already talking about it, actually moving the
Speaker 12: capital back into where the big airport is.
Speaker 6: I was walking around with this yesterday. Someone was like, man,
Speaker 6: why are you walking around with that brooksh.
Speaker 5: When we got to Guyana, we didn't just head straight
Speaker 5: for the oil and gas experts and for a drive
Speaker 5: by of the Exxon headquarters. We wanted to understand the
Speaker 5: context all these changes were happening in, so we went
Speaker 5: to the market, we talked to fishermen at the seawall,
Speaker 5: and we hit the National Museum with Salvador. It turns
Speaker 5: out the Dutch and the British weren't the only colonial
Speaker 5: powers interested in Guyana back in the seventeen hundreds. The French,
Speaker 5: Spanish and Portuguese all took parts of the country too.
Speaker 12: You got the true Guanas and what they used to
Speaker 12: call British Guiana.
Speaker 4: Dutch Guiana and French Guiana.
Speaker 8: Dutch Guiana is surnam is.
Speaker 1: Here and Spanish Cana was here and they are Naco.
Speaker 12: Spanish Guana became part of Venezuela. Portuguese Ganda became part
Speaker 12: of Brazil. So you've got French, no French, Dutch and English.
Speaker 12: But the border got changed.
Speaker 5: At this point, Salvador stood in front of a big
Speaker 5: map of the country to show how these former colonies
Speaker 5: had been divided into new countries.
Speaker 1: Brazil and we gave all of this to Venezuela. Sonaudi
Speaker 1: claimed that this should be border. So two turds again,
Speaker 1: they say it belongs to them.
Speaker 13: Na, no way, sorry, here.
Speaker 1: Not happening.
Speaker 5: In case you missed that, he's saying that Venezuela is
Speaker 5: laying claim to a portion of Guyana. In fact, they
Speaker 5: lay claim to a fairly large percentage of Guyana's land
Speaker 5: and also to all of its offshore area, which means
Speaker 5: the oil. That border dispute has been going on for
Speaker 5: more than a century, but the twenty fifteen discovery of
Speaker 5: oil in Guyana reignited it. By that point, Venezuela had
Speaker 5: actually kicked out several foreign oil companies, including Exonmobile.
Speaker 13: The reason why we are famous, no is that Venezuela
Speaker 13: La has denied, denied the US companies there rightful share.
Speaker 4: Whatever that.
Speaker 5: Maybe this is Alfred Boulai, an engineer and energy expert
Speaker 5: in Guyana, who says there have been various research projects
Speaker 5: around oil in the country for decades. Today he works
Speaker 5: for Transparency Institute Guyana, which pushes for increased government transparency.
Speaker 13: So I knew it was oil being healed, and certain
Speaker 13: knowledgeable people knew yet, particularly mister Borlam in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 13: the Coamo.
Speaker 5: President, that's former President Forbes Burnham. The country officially gained
Speaker 5: independence from Britain in nineteen sixty six, but it didn't
Speaker 5: have its first entirely democratic election until the early nineties.
Speaker 5: In the lead up to independence, the most popular party
Speaker 5: was the People's Progressive Party the PPP, and at that
Speaker 5: point in the sixties it was a cross racial party
Speaker 5: led by two men, one of Indian descent, Chetty Jagon,
Speaker 5: the other of African descent Forbes Burnham. Like a lot
Speaker 5: of other South American political leaders at the time, they
Speaker 5: were both leftists, and they had strong opinions about who
Speaker 5: should own and benefit from Guyana's natural resources, not Western
Speaker 5: oil companies. For one, they wanted Guyana's resources to benefit
Speaker 5: its people. Also, like a lot of South American countries,
Speaker 5: Guyana was on the CIA's radar at the time, and
Speaker 5: they had strong opinions about which of these two men
Speaker 5: they'd prefer to see in charge of so many resources.
Speaker 5: Burnham the one who didn't spend quite so much time
Speaker 5: with Fidel Castro as they have done in so many countries.
Speaker 5: The CIA leaned on racial differences to split the parties
Speaker 5: into two and then backed Burnham. Despite its relative stability
Speaker 5: compared to some of its neighbors, Guyana wasn't a big
Speaker 5: target for its oil because it sat beneath the ocean
Speaker 5: floor some forty miles off the coast. So from the
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies to the early two thousands, the big US
Speaker 5: oil companies were really concentrating on Venezuela.
Speaker 13: So I am absolutely sure that they knew they was
Speaker 13: always there and just waited Venezuela is going to play bad.
Speaker 13: Then they said, well, okay, we have oil elsewhere, and
Speaker 13: then negotiated a very sweet deal. So the people who
Speaker 13: knew about oil knew these things, but the general public didn't.
Speaker 5: Boo I thinks it's possible that Venezuela and Guyana's oil
Speaker 5: are fed by the same reserve, which could be further
Speaker 5: fueling Venezuela's attempts to stop the drilling in Guyana. All
Speaker 5: of this got Keana Wilberg and her team at KIT
Speaker 5: News thinking about one key question that they had not
Speaker 5: been able to find an answer to about Exxon's sudden
Speaker 5: presence in Guyana.
Speaker 4: The contract that we have with this company.
Speaker 5: Steve Call's book Private Empire is filled with details about
Speaker 5: what kinds of deals countries like Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and
Speaker 5: Guyana's neighbor Venezuela had struck with Exon In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 5: a year after Exon discovered oil offshore. Keana and her
Speaker 5: newsroom wanted to know where Guyana stood compared to those
Speaker 5: other countries. Equatorial Guinea had only gotten about eight percent
Speaker 5: royalties in its contract, Chad got ten percent. But Guyana
Speaker 5: was more stable and developed than those countries had been
Speaker 5: when they inked contracts with Exxon. Surely they would get more.
Speaker 4: And it took us a year of writing over and
Speaker 4: over and over and over. They released a contract, release
Speaker 4: a contract release, release.
Speaker 5: It next time on light sweet crude.
Speaker 10: This is something that was hidden from media since nineteen
Speaker 10: ninety nine.
Speaker 4: No one saw this document.
Speaker 6: The majority of people, including the IMF, have gone on
Speaker 6: record as saying it was a very unfair deal for
Speaker 6: the ENA.
Speaker 13: I began talking to someone there and he said he
Speaker 13: would like to do a case, but nobody would do
Speaker 13: the case for him to challenge the oil, and I said,
Speaker 13: I'll do it.