Source: The Progressive
Since ExxonMobil announced the 2015 discovery of large oil reserves off the coast of Guyana, the small South American country has been buzzing with visions of a coming oil boom that U.S. diplomats say is going to bring tremendous wealth to the people of Guyana, about one-third of whom live below the poverty line.S
“There will be an unimaginable amount of revenue [profits and royalties] coming into the country,” U.S. diplomat Terry Steers-Gonzalez said in remarks at the Essequibo Chamber of Commerce annual dinner in December.
Currently, ExxonMobil estimates that the equivalent of more than 5 billion barrels of oil are concentrated in the Stabroek Block, an area about 100 miles off the coast of Guyana. Reports indicate that ExxonMobil will begin producing about 100,000 barrels a day in 2020. The International Monetary Fund is anticipating an “oil windfall” for the country.
For officials in Washington, D.C., the discovery creates fresh opportunities to influence the global oil market. “We can make our hemisphere the undisputed seat of global energy supply,” Rex Tillerson, the previous Secretary of State and a former head of ExxonMobil, saidlast year.
Now that the United States is going through its own oil boom, becoming the largest producer of oil in the world, President Donald Trump has declared that the nation is on its way to achieving “energy dominance.”