President Irfaan Ali has urged Guyanese to measure the success of the oil industry by more than just the number of barrels produced. “We cannot squander this moment by counting barrels only,” Ali said during a business launch event on Wednesday.
Instead, he emphasized the development of people and skills. “Engineers trained, welders certified, coders employed, and entrepreneurs funded, that must come.” He stressed that the real value of oil lies in “human capital”.
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Ali underscored the importance of long-term planning. “The long game is what we are playing. When the oil stops flowing, the question will be, did we use it to build a nation, or did we just end it?”
The President said Guyana is already seeing the benefits of technology and skills transfer across the sector. These include subsea engineering, health and safety compliance, waste disposal services, fabrication, and digital mapping.
He described the sector as a “diversified” and “well built” one that is creating a new generation of Guyanese engineers, analysts, and logistics specialists. “This tide has a storm and is bringing in more than just crude oil. It is bringing in capacity, competency, and confidence,” he continued.
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Ali pointed to developments such as the Gas-to-Energy project in Wales, fabrication centers on the East Coast, warehouses on the East Bank, and new trading partnerships. Together, he said, these are building the “architecture of a modern Guyanese economy.”
While jobs and investment are important, he stressed that “the transfer of know-how, the access to innovation and the transformation of our workforce” are what truly matter.
“When this sector is gone, and that is a long way from now, we must have more to show than spent wells and empty incomes,” Ali said. “We must have a people who can build, design, operate and innovate on land, sea and the digital sky.”
He warned that focusing only on extraction means missing the bigger picture. “The true value of oil and gas is not only what comes out of the seabed. It is what we do with it above ground,” Ali noted.
