Two policy experts believe that there should no longer be much of a question of whether Guyana should develop its oil resources to fuel its sustainable development. Wazim Mowla, who focuses on Caribbean studies and foreign policy, said it is almost a must, that Guyana has a responsibility to use its new wealth to fight climate change.
Further, he posited that the political and economic clout Guyana will get from its newfound wealth can be used to represent the interests of its Caribbean neighbours and the wider global South in their climate mitigation and adaptation endeavours.
Mowla made these comments in an exclusive interview with OilNOW alongside Lorraine Sobers, an engineer and lecturer at the University of the West Indies.
In large part, the discussion explored the question of whether newer oil producing countries should forsake revenues from oil production in favour of prescriptive international climate goals.
Mowla, who is a non-resident scholar at Florida University’s Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, explained that climate change, at a policy level, breaks down to a financing problem for developing countries.
With the difficulty in accessing financing, he said Guyana is now uniquely advantaged as a developing country.
“To invest in renewable energies takes money. Also, to build infrastructure that can help withstand the effects of climate change, both pre and post, takes financing and Guyana with its oil and gas revenues has the seed capital to be able to do so.”
He added that Guyana may even be able to help other Caribbean countries position themselves to do so. He opined that the financial institutions are not set up in a way that allows them to help Caribbean nations achieve exactly what they need to.
Sometimes, the access to concessional financing these institutions give to Caribbean nations, brings with it structural readjustments that end up hurting working class populations in the region, Mowla explained.
“What Guyana has is an opportunity to use its own oil and gas revenue to basically address these issues and what it does is, it helps Guyana’s global brand.”
Guyana can, Mowla said, use this opportunity to tell the world that it is tackling climate change and helping its neighbouring countries to do so.
Sobers advised in this regard that any country that’s producing oil and gas should have a cap on their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per capita.
“We’re going to emit carbon dioxide. It can get very intense based on the activities or the industries that you decide to sign up with,” she said.
In the case of her home country, Trinidad and Tobago, Sobers said the country has been among the top emitters per capita in the world, and this is because of its small population.
She said, “In the case of Guyana, with its even smaller population, they could very easily with certain industries that may not seem highly polluting and so on, end up in the top 10 simply because you have a smaller population.”
Sobers, who has expressed a keen interest in carbon capture and storage solutions, further advised that to keep emissions per capita in check, Guyana could try to pair CO2 emitting activities to CO2 reduction activities.
If Guyana identifies potential geologic storage sites for carbon dioxide, a solution that she said is inexpensive, it will help Guyana’s case.
“This activity is going to produce this amount of CO2. So, this is what we’re going to do to remove that from the atmosphere so that we could justify that you’re developing sustainably, and you have the numbers to show it,” Sobers said.
Already, the Government of Guyana has approved a request by ExxonMobil to conduct studies on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) so that the company may utilize it in its local operations
The government has been touting the sheer size of Guyana’s forests, as one of the countries with the highest forest cover in the world and very low deforestation rates. Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo told the International Energy Conference attendees in February that the sequestering services provided by Guyana’s forests are of such magnitude that even with further ramp-ups in oil production, Guyana would still be a ‘net zero emitter’ meaning the volume of its total carbon emissions is not larger than that of the carbon it sequesters.
Look out for the full interview with Mowla and Sobers premiering on Sunday, March 13 at 11:00 AM on OilNOW TV and Facebook Page.
