Guyana’s oil bonanza enriches Exxon, not citizens

Dear Editor,

Missiles and drones may light up the Middle East skies, but their tremors are enriching a new theatre of fortune—a peaceful tropical coastline thousands of miles away. Here in Guyana, the postwar oil bonanza has become the tide lifting ExxonMobil’s tankers, not Guyana’s people.

Once celebrated as the world’s fastest‑growing economy, Guyana today is also among its most lopsided. The very war that choked global energy routes has inflated our revenues—roughly US $623 million a week from the Stabroek Block, compared to US $370 million before global prices jumped. Yet the country receives just 14.5 percent of each barrel’s value. The rest, unbothered by any tax, sails quietly to Exxon and its partners while the government calls it “shared prosperity.”

“The same profits that Exxon boasts to Wall Street are taxed abroad—while Guyana subsidizes the burden at home.”

A Tax Holiday for Exxon, a Bill for Us

ExxonMobil has already stated it will pay no corporate tax in Guyana—and the government appears content to oblige. The irony burns brighter than the flares over our offshore rigs: the dividends Exxon gifts to its shareholders are taxed in their home countries, yet Guyana, the source of the wealth itself, reaps little more than a nod.

For ordinary Guyanese, that imbalance has real consequences. Food and housing costs have soared 75 percent since 2021, strangling small businesses and hammering families who were promised uplift. The oil industry poaches the best workers, deepening wage gaps and stretching public services thin. The administration’s plea for “economic patriotism” lands hollow amid the daily arithmetic of rising prices.

Concrete, Pipelines, and Patronage

President Irfaan Ali touts new bridges, schools, and highways as symbols of progress. They are needed, yes—but they are not strategies. Many have been placed in politically friendly districts despite unsound ground conditions, a pattern repeating itself across big‑ticket development projects.

The flagship gas‑to‑shore venture at Wales, intended to clean up power generation, is years behind schedule and six times over budget. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, presses ahead offshore—building new floating production units and sketching out two more extraction sites. Each step strengthens their grip on the country’s main source of revenue and weakens Guyana’s leverage over its own resources.

Watching the Gold Rush from the Shore

Former finance minister Winston Jordan has urged restraint, calling for the sovereign wealth fund to sequester current profits before political appetites turn them into campaign cash. Such advice remains unanswered. With oil making up three‑quarters of GDP and nearly half the national budget, economic strategy now seems hostage to Exxon’s production schedule.

Guyana, that newly minted star of global growth, risks becoming its own cautionary tale—a place where foreign partners reap tax‑free glory while citizens pay inflated prices for the privilege. In this arrangement, the notion of “shared prosperity” rings less like a policy and more like a prayer.

In the end, true independence will be measured not by the barrels pumped or bridges built, but by whether Guyana finally dares to tax the gold it gave away.