Jagdeo is out of touch with reality
Kaieteur News – The Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, continues with this charade that oil production has a narrow window of 20 years. This narrow window; has become the PPP / C’s justification for granting a free license to Exxon and its partners to determine the rate and volume of oil extracted in Guyana.
It is also an excuse for not having a National Hydrocarbon Depletion Policy. Such a policy usually dictates how much and how quickly oil is extracted. In the absence of any such written policy, the oil companies are free to determine Guyana’s production levels. This is not only reckless but it also externalises Guyana’s sovereign right to set such levels.
Jagdeo does not deceive anyone, except himself, that fossil fuels have a limited shelf life. It now narrows this down to 20 years which would be by 2040. It is said that if you repeat something over and over again, people will eventually believe it. However, Jagdeo will find it difficult to sell for people to accept the nonsense it peddles for a narrow window for oil production before it is displaced by renewable energy.
In his desperation to make his causeless, fingers are pointed at the decisions made by US President Joe Biden. Undoubtedly Jagdeo is taking its cue from Washington to rejoin the Paris Agreement, suspend the Keystone pipeline project and stop oil drilling at the Arctic Asylum. Undoubtedly, it suggests from these developments that oil days are numbered. Or he simply gives him the justification for his outrageous belief that Guyana should adopt the slogan “Drill Baby, Drill! As fast and as much as you can! ”
What Jagdeo omits to mention is that Biden has not cheated fracking. This is a method used to release shale gas from rocks. The gas is not considered a clean source of energy. So, while Jagdeo may have been led to believe that America is on a major attempt to replace fossil fuels, Biden’s policies are just a smoke screen.
Biden is not on the mission to put the oil companies out of business. The oil companies had a tremendous influence and it would be foolish for Biden to risk the oil companies becoming his enemies.
Jagdeo forgets or doesn’t know that it was the oil industry more than the environmentalists that caused a firestorm about the Keystone project, which he feared would lead to job losses in the industry. Biden’s Executive Orders earlier this year were merely an attempt to reverse Trump’s anti-environmental stance rather than a major push for renewable energy. But that’s a difference Jagdeo will never understand.
Jagdeo must have forgotten how the U.S. Administration under which Biden served, dropped his hopes for an agreement in Copenhagen. If Jagdeo had hoped that it would have come to light in Copenhagen, he would have been walking in the air as his imperial-style forest agreement with Norway would have made him a global supermarket. However, that star stood behind Copenhagen, reducing Jagdeo to disguise an environmental champion.
He should know that the targets under the Paris Agreement are not going to be achieved. And he should ask himself where is the promised funding that the developed countries promised for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
If the rebuttal on those commitments is anything to go by, it should force Jagdeo to be careful to accept any commitment or target made by the US in relation to the global climate crisis. If anything, the United States’ footprint on its financial commitments to support reduced emissions, does not fit well with the current promise to use its influence to reduce and put the Paris Agreement back on track.
The Paris Agreement is dead and buried. The world is not in a mood to revive the Paris Agreement. And if Jagdeo doesn’t understand this, then it’s the opposite of reality.
The United States by itself cannot force the agreement back on track. It requires cooperation with other major emitters, especially India and China.
The United States is currently locked in a vicious exchange of words with China. But the key to reducing emissions must include an agreement with China. Without China on board, there is little chance of any real impact on global emissions levels.
As ambitious as Biden’s climate policy may seem, it won’t affect fossil fuel production. It is a pipe dream for anyone to assume that the thrust towards renewable energy threatens fossil fuels.
By the way, why would Jagdeo, who feels there is only a narrow window of 20 years for oil production; wants the country to be investing in an offshore gas plant that will require natural gas to come from exactly the oil it believes is going out of business in 20 years time? What is Guyana, another white elephant building?
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)