Nice earth.
Does that mean more close?
Yeah? Yeah, oh good.
First time I ever heard anything about Guyana it was years ago in a pirate bar, Yes, a pirate bar in San Francisco, drinking aged rum for the first time, while a friend of mine told me about this new gig he'd gotten promoting. A small South American country has an ecotourism destination. Conservation efforts and ecotourism have been a big thing in Guyana about as long as they've been a thing, period. But now the country is known not only for its pristine rainforest and hundreds of species of
native birds, but also for its burgeoning oil industry. I wanted to know whether the ecotourism folks were annoyed by the oil folks, whether they worried that having to fly into an oil boomtown might dampen the ecotourism experience for people, or whether they could just sort of ignore it all. So we planned a trip to Kiman House, or as Americans might say, at Cayman House. Coimon House is an eco lodge and research center in the heart of Guyana's
Rupununi region. Unlike the rest of the interior of the country, which is mountains and forest. The Rupununi is savannah. There are cowboys there and wide open spaces, and it's way closer to Brazil than it is to Georgetown. I was excited to explore a different part of the country, and then I messed up my flight plans and our producer Sarah had to go alone, first on a tiny plane to a city called Letham, and then on a two hour drive in a pickup truck over dirt roads.
Hi. Hi, I'm Dilian, I'm Sarah Nice, Sarah Lay.
Would you welcome to you? Carrion thim In House.
Thank you.
Kimon House is primarily staffed by members of various local indigenous tribes, which is quite common with ecotourism destinations in Guyana. The country has provided a model for ecotourism that can offer indigenous locals and income and visitors in immersive experience. Sometimes eco lodges double as research stations, and that's definitely true of Kiman House where they research yes kim in, specifically black kime in. If you've never seen one before.
They're the same family as alligators. A lot of kimen are small, but the black kime in can be up to fourteen feet long, so a little bit terrifying. The boat a small metal one with a motor attached and some benches to sit on heads out. At sundown, the guy brings snacks and of course Guyana's famous El Dorado
aged rum. It's humid and sweaty, and there are tons of mosquitoes, but serious says, it's so picturesque and gorgeous just you and all these animals around you, that none of that really matters, okay.
And then as nightfall we will come shaning.
If he has a bright art, he will come shaning looking for bars or animal whatsoever we can see on.
Can I have some water before we get on the boat.
Oh yes, if you want to have your urination, I'm sorry, you can use the bushit.
Okay, No, I'm actually okay, but thank you.
And it's not just time. And you'll see from the boat, Guyana's forests and rivers are teeming with life.
Right here.
It's just the monkeys, the birds, the lucky enough you see tupy swimming across or coffee barus and otters are.
Come on here.
When they do spot a kimen, they pull them up to tag or check them, and sometimes they take guests along for the ride.
J Yeah, they say, what is that?
That's how we get gen Along the way.
Guides like this one, who referred to himself interchangeably as Josie and jose Id, birds by their call and tell visitors all about the local area and customs. The founders of Kiman House are an American couple who lived in Guyana for a number of years because one of them was a researcher studying you guessed it, the Black Kymen. They developed relationships with community members and created a library
for local school children. They even started to look after the area's stray dogs, who now called Kimen House their home and give the staff some extra mouths to feed. Guyana has about a dozen of these sorts of eco lodges all across the country, and people come from all over the world to visit them. In twenty nineteen, Guyana was named the planet's top eco tourism destination at ITB Berlin, the largest tourism trade show in the world. Twenty nineteen.
That's the same year the country shipped its first barrel of oil. That honor of top ecotourism destination is one that Guyana had been working really hard to win for close to twenty years. So I thought, surely there would be some concerns about how becoming one of the world's largest oil producers could impact that. But it turned out tho opposie is true. That's our story today. I'm Ami
Westervelt and this is light, sweet crude. Guyana has had a well deserved global reputation for conservation for a long time. In two thousand and nine, it was one of the very first participants in a UN program called RED which stands for Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Basically, it lets high emitting global North countries pay low emitting
global South countries to preserve their forests. So Norway, an oil rich country, committed to pay two hundred and fifty million dollars to Guyana provided that Guyana could show certain conservation metrics along the way. That deal was signed by former President Brought jug Daeo, Yes, the same jug Dao that's Vice president today and the government's biggest supporter of the oil industry. The payments from the Norway deal were
supposed to fund low carbon development. The idea was that the money could help Guyana develop, but do so in a way that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. It was heralded as this great example of how we could value ecological services, things like forest full of trees that capture and store carbon dioxide, for example, or the preservation of biodiversity,
but it still had the whiff of colonialism about it. Norway, a country that is tremendously wealthy from oil with a trillion dollars Sovereign Wealth Fund, telling Guyana how to preserve biodiversity.
Okay, so you were saying you were going to get X dollars if you maintain deforestation rate that point zero five percent fifty million over five years.
Dane Gobin is the CEO of the IBACRAMA International Center for Rainforest Conservation and Development, the crown jewel of Guyana's conservation and ecotourism efforts.
But at the same time, what you're saying is that you have to satisfy other criteria to get the money. Yeah, so you're going to the shop to buy upound the butter, and you pay for the butler, and the guy is saying, so before I give you the butterer, you need to tell me if you're taking care of your children, if you wash your.
Car more than a decade before the Norway deal was signed. Guyana created a three hundred and seventy one thousand hector reserve called Uacrama in the middle of what's called the Guyana Shield, an area with tremendous by diversity to the northwest the Amazon Rainforest. The government established the Ebucroma International Center there to research and pilot sustainable forestry and agriculture projects, and they opened the Ewacroma River Lodge as one of
the country's first eco tourism destinations. Ebukroma has had loads of international donors over the years. Its current patron is King Charles.
And I'm saying, Hondan, the butter is a dollar, I'm paying you a dollar. What's this side of stuff? So it's it's a challenge because the dough in a country doing it, it's taxpayers money, so they have to do it on the best practice. Quote governor's anti corruption targets should be met and sun it's a donation, right, and that's a challenge. So government is Saint Hondan, you're paying for the forest. You've agreed that this is the rate
of defire station. We've maintained it. What's this about other stuff? Now, this is a business transaction. The people who want this have what they call steel ropes attached. It's not just the protective forests. And it's actually condescending because especially on the basis that you have destroyed your forest, but you're actually so you're giving me money to almost tell the breed to the air that you breathe, but you're telling us how to spend it.
Gobin says that he's been on the other side of this sort of situation too, with payments to local indigenous groups around you, Acrama.
We have had that at the level of the communities and let me, I can understand from their perspective. So when the communities aren't Timber and money's from us, we're worried about how this money is going to be spent. Will they go open a round shop? What will they do? So, I mean, we'd like to see a school build, we'd like to see scholarships, but this is their wood. We're
paying them for deer wood. We can't tell them. So what we did with the communities, and it's a model, and I don't think it will work at them bilaterals, but we work with them. And he says, look, you set up a committee to look at how the money will be spent.
So in a way, there is no clean money. It's always tied to something, which begs the question where do you draw the line. For Gobin, there's little difference between taking money from Norway or taking money from say Axon. Today, the company has donated seven million dollars to EWACRAMA through its foundation.
Guyana is part of a very important landscape known as the Guyana Shield. It's actually one of the last remaining intact force ecosystems.
In the world.
This space offers a great opportunity for conservation.
Excellent's CEE may not have visited Euacrama yet, but it's marketing team sure has. They've been busy making videos there to promote the company's commitment to conservation in Guyana.
We really need to nurture it and ensure that we have this re future generations to come, even while we use it in a wise way.
Gobin is well aware of the optics and how people might be irged by a conservation organization receiving millions of dollars in donations from an oil company.
And yes, the obvious question is, you know, should we be taking money from the oil company. And my question to that is okay, oil will be there. We continue to say, you know, if you read the papers, if you read the chitro, you'll see, you know, exon stripping Ayana. The question is if we've accepted that they're stripping for a moment, they're giving you something back. It could be more,
but they're giving you something back. And if they didn't give you, they would get knocked for not giving something back when they're giving No, the question is should you be accepting we are not advocacy. We're not advocates. Don't we run a rainforest. We don't get involved in politics. But we have to take care of all people. And if somebody is saying, here's a grant, you can do capacity building and training, you can immove the livelhoods of Guyanese.
You could do all kinds of things, why should we say no.
Dan's not stupid. Dan just doesn't tell. As long as there's money.
Yeah, remember Melinda Jenkie, the lawyer trying to stop the offshore drilling project in court. For Jinkie, there is no way to separate the money from its corporate influence. There are always strings attached.
I find a lot of people in this conservation sector in this country. It's not that interested in conservation, but they are very interested in being given grants to do what they term conservation work, which generally conserves nothing.
How does it concern nothing?
What do they do? Wf were They did the thing off Surguyana and came back in rapturous about the wonderful marine wildlife we had and that it's possible to do oil and protect marine wildlife. I'm not entirely sure what planet we can do that on, but it's not this one.
Pri But Exxon is dropping more than just money.
They are allowed to dump four thousand barrels of sewage into the ocean every day. So four thousand barrels of sewage every day adds up to, over the life of the project, one point two billion gallons of sewage in our pristine ocean. There's one point two billion bottles of oil in that particular field, so we're getting roughly again the ship for every bottel of oil they take out.
Exxon's money has those same steel ropes attached as other international donors, but instead of requiring good governance and a crackdown on political corruption, they're asking Euochrama staff to appear in marketing videos and say that Exon is supporting important conservation efforts. Some might say they want to greenwash.
This is not a personal benefit. This is a benefit to Iwokrama, it's community partners and to the nation of Guyana. And as I said, we could probably get some more. But at the end of the day, you know what the recognition is. I mean, it's something that I don't think people on average realize. Exxon Mobile bet five or billion dollars without knowing what was there. Shell left. Shell was partner, and they left a few years after because there was nothing.
Bobin is referring to the original contract that Exon had with Guyana, which was signed in nineteen ninety nine. At the time, Exon's exploration partner was Shell, but after the two started exploring an earnest in two thousand and eight and didn't find anything for a few years, Shell left that partnership.
Now shouldn't they be given some kind of what recognition for that investment in Guyana? Because if there was nothing there, they would have walked away with a five billion dollar loss. They stuck it out. And I'm not advocating for them. I have no interest. Actually, I would not like to see ail out there. But the reality is you look at the way healthcare system, look at ouray education system.
Guyanese want to go to Harvard guy and wanted to go with the year better school's bet the healthcare, So who's paying for that?
We heard this from a lot of people in the conservation space, this idea that oil is obviously not great for the environment, but what's done is done, and they may as well use the oil money to further conservation efforts. I really wanted to hear from the one person everyone I spoke with in Guyana told me to talk to about conservation. Hi, I'm sorry, I'm early, so okay jet. He reminds me of my not and that our June
runs the Guyana Marine Conservation Society. She shared some similarly contradictory views while we were walking around her neighborhood near the coast in Georgetown.
Oleander gardens are oleander plants, the orleander flowers, and this area is called oleander gardens. But because of all the old homes being bought out and demolished and replaced by these high rising apartments, we now have chamberget Xon as our neighbors. So I always tell people you are now coming into Oily and the Gardens, which is you know, a bastardization of or beautiful oleander flower. So welcome to Oily and the Gardens.
But well, our June seems not so thrilled the idea that her neighborhood has been turned into condos central for foreign oil execs. She's also happy that Guyanese property owners and developers are benefiting from that change.
Now these are three. Each apartment has its own to the bath.
Wow.
So there was those a couple of five that was in the US for a month. Wow. And they're all Guyanese business people.
And then renting out mostly to Yeah, it's all oil and gas.
But then why was saying that they.
Carved back in terms of local content. They gave a Guyanese opportunities in the real estate market, you know. So this is Tracy's ten apartments there and another five year all of them are already rented out.
Wow.
And I went to school with her in Barbados.
So lots of young people like our age as well, are getting opportunities to become you know, food caterers, service providers, logistics providers.
Right because they have to hire they have our June says when she first heard Axon was coming to Guyana, she was worried.
I didn't know much about Exxon other than when there was that New Yorker article that basically was, you know, exposing their culture and reality of funding climate change denial denial campaigns. That was the first time Exon came in my radar. And and and to me, if you're your you know, top tier of your company is doing something as as insidious as that it was, it was terrible.
It was terrible for me because if you're, you know, funding climate change denial campaigns, how could you be considered environmentally responsible? So having all of the technology is one thing, but that technology is useless if your culture is one of of de sit.
She's also very clear eyed about the climate tax Guyana is already experiencing and the role that fossil fuels play and exacerbating those impacts.
And appeared that's supposed to be a tri season. You're still having torrential downpour. You're having short torrential downport. I will flood your city and in minutes. You know, all of that, you're seeing that that that that was never what our weather conditioned to be like in the past and shell each way I worked, we had in in cases parts of the beach we were losing like ninety
feet of beach per month. That is sort of unprecedented erosion in terms of the rapidity of that as actually as a result of that that that effect the community of two hundred and eighty members of them had to relocate inland to higher ground. So that was what in my and I always refer to as my first experience of climate change refugees.
But she doesn't necessarily see any of that as a reason not to drill for oil offshore. She believes Exon can and will do better in Guyana with respect to environmental protections.
So for sure, I think Exxon has an opportunity of goal, an opportunity to do what is right by the environment, and if they don't, well, you know, we'll call them out. And I think as well to the government also has to hold it Exon accomfortable because Exxon gets away with slackness if it's allowed by the administration.
And she sees whatever environmental degradation oil drilling might bring as an acceptable trade off for money that could lift Guyanese out of poverty. Although she was eventually sent to boarding school and taught to fly planes by her father. Our June grew up in the indigenous village that her mother was from, and she saw there up close the poverty that a lot of Guyanese citizens still deal with today.
Guana it was a very poor country. And growing up with my Amoronnian grandmother in a river in community where there was a lot of poverty as well, including workin' on shell Beach where you know people that eat sea dartlet meat and eggs exists. Seeing poverty was a part of my reality.
Shell Beach became the first place Our June's organization worked to conserve. Today she works with local residents there to protect the turtles that they once had to eat to survive. But she's also seen poverty force young people in the area into sex work just to access daily necessities.
Seeing young girls who had no economic opportunities and would have to have survival sex to be able to buy an underwear or buy a bra, or to eat as part of my reality. So in terms of seeing, you know, this country being blessed with so much natural resources, including the recently discovered and produce oil, it made me. It makes me realize that. Look, if you have, you know, abundant natural sources, and you could use those natural resources in a very responsible manner to help to help lift
your people out of poverty. That's what I support.
It makes a lot of sense. The looming question, of course, is whether it will actually lift people out of poverty, and whether it will do so before it destroys any of the other natural resources that Guyanese people depend on. That's where Janki, the attorney we heard from before, thinks a lot of Guyanese people are engaging in magical thinking.
The global Norse has basically broken the global climate system as a result of greenhouse gas pollution, and I think we should stop talking about emissions and call it what it is, which is pollution from fossil fuels. It is incredibly stupid for anybody to say, well, because you did something bad and broke it, we now have a right to do something bad and break it even further. The global climate system is precisely what it says, it's a
global climate system. The idea that more money is going to make things better again it.
Is also false.
Gen is not a poor country, gain is an extremely rich country. It's the people who are poor, and they're poor because it's the same set of people that have governed this country and run it into the ground. So the idea that more money will make any difference is not based on any evidence whatsoever. All the evidence points to the government, whichever government is, whichever party is in power, it doesn't really matter. What it points to is squandering
of national income. And I think it's disingenuous to be claiming to be a conservation organization and at the same time trying to make allowances for the fossil fuel sector, which is destroying the planet. Now, a marine conservation society supposedly cares about turtles. They actually started off as a gan a marine turtle conservation society.
That's the organization that on our June runs.
You only have to look at what oil does to a turtle to realize that saying on the one hand that you want to protect turtles and saying on the other hand that fossil fuels can be beneficial in some way are to completely contradictory positions. It's one or the other. Either you protect the ocean or you support fossil fuels. There isn't any middle ground.
And Ewercrama Dean Gobin is still hopeful that selling ecosystem services, both to oil companies and to other international buyers is a potential path out of poverty for Guyana that keeps the focus on conservation. When he talks about it, he sounds very similar to Jankie.
Actually, so ecosystem services would be as very common as carbon which people speak of as tourism. It's a service from the ecosystem, the fires, the environment. But then you get into the carbon hydrology, water major ecosystem services. They say the next wars will be fought over water. Unfortunately a lot of people have recognized forests for these ecosystem services,
but no one could put their value in it. Now, if I got the loan from the band, I would say we have arrived as far as managers, and I've always believed we're in the conservation business. This is not any fluffy thing. This is a business. You have a car business, you have a stationary business, you sell hardware. I sell ecosystem services.
Give Guyana the respect and the admiration for being a carbon sink and starting that dialogue about how do we actually make sure that this country stays as a carbon sink Because that's the most important thing for the planet. If every country was a carbon sink, we would not be in the mess we are in now.
All right.
This is where people need to stand up and say, there is a better future for Guyana, and we can help you to do that. Get rid of these loans, get rid of the debt, Stop lending money to governments who then squander it and burden the population with it. But simply pay us the people for that carbon sink service. Pay us the people to create a marine protected area over our exclusive economic zone and protect everything that's there. That's good enough.
The key difference between the two is that Gobin sees no problem with selling those services to Exon or its partners to offset the emissions they're generating by drilling for oil offshore. But for all of his faith in Guyana's valuable ecosystem services and his acceptance of the oil industry as a sort of necessary evil, Gobin also realizes that
a catastrophic oil spill would ruin all of it. Is there any concern that something like an oil spill, for example, if it was big enough, could impact the ecosystem services?
Definitely? Definitely, Yeah, And that's the worry you know, the thing is, I wouldn't sit here and say it wouldn't. I would sit here and says it can't happen. Yeah, because chances are it's going to happen.
I mean, there's a lot of evidence around that, the data speaks for.
So you know, again, the best the next best thing to that is what planning and planning plan ahead. So this is going to happen. It has happened before, it will happen again. So if it happened, so I know, government is very actively working with the companies to look at plan to put in place mechanisms, emergency mechanisms to save the coastline. And I'm comfortable that the board, government and the companies are spending enough resources to be able to deal with it.
But even as the country starts to build the skills and resources required to deal with oil, another environmental danger is looming.
We are outlining the gas to shore project and what it will bring to our country.
That's Guyana's President Irfan Ali announcing a new project, one that's separate from the offshore drilling and governed by different contracts and arrangements entirely the gas to energy project. Now, remember managing gas has been something of a problem for the oil companies since the beginning of their production in Guyana. It's a waste product they're supposed to be managing. Up until late twenty twenty two, that mostly meant burning it
off what's called called flaring. But now that they've redesigned their gas compressor, Excellon says it's back to reinjecting the gas underground. However, the company has also repositioned gas from a byproduct to another revenue stream. Now it's being presented as a huge gift to Guyana.
The gas in this phase comes to the government and people of Ghana free of costs, free of costs.
And as both oil companies and even some large environmental groups have done all over the world, the gas is being presented as a bridge to energy transition, a key part of the President's low carbon development strategy.
We are taking the issue of environment and climate seriously. Natural gas is far less polluting than fossil fuel and a supply of energy, so this project also is part of our climate Resilien's plan structural transformation. This project allows us to have structural transformation.
And now it's time to talk about pultering again. Because, of course, if your problem is methane emissions, it's helpful to focus everyone's attention on carbon emissions. And it's true. Gas does emit less CO two than coal or oil, but it emits a whole lot of methane, which is a greenhouse gas that's about eighty times more potent than CO two over twenty years. And methane isn't just released
when people burn gas. It's emitted all along the way, when it's extracted, when it's refined, when it's transported, and when it's burnt. The industry refers to this as methane leaks, which sounds like an accident oopsie, But studies are piling up that show it's just par for the course when
you're using gas for energy. In the past decade, scientists have discovered not only that all of our existing gas infrastructure emits a lot more methane than anyone previously thought, and the whole lot more than the industry has ever admitted, but also that it's worse for the atmosphere. It's also really short lived, which is good news. That means if we could dramatically reduce methane emissions now, it would buy us some time to reduce all of the other greenhouse
gas emissions. But instead of doing any of those things, the industry is pushing the world in the opposite direction, most recently using the shortage of gas in Europe caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine as justification to lock in gas for decades. Gas often gets talked about as being a bridge to renewable energy, something we can just use until there's enough renewables on the grid, or that can
help to stabilize solar and wind sources. But what we've seen in reality over the past twenty years is gas being baked in as the dominant energy source. It's a bridge to nowhere. And on top of all that, in Guyana, there's the fact that there's actually a lot more gas being produced than the country could ever possibly use for energy. The fifty million cubic feet of gas that they're bringing we only need for our electricity.
We only need about thirty.
But that's the first phase fifty.
They're going to be bringing one hundred and twenty million.
So it's four times what you actually use.
And they are consistent, well, we need to do something with the gas, because.
If we don't do anything with the gas, then.
Eggxon would have no choice.
But to flare it. That's our story next time Light Sweet Crude is a Drilled and Damages co production. Both shows are Critical Frequency originals. Our editor and senior producer is Sarah Ventry. Sound design, mixing and mastering by Martin saltz Ostwick, Our fact checker is Anna Poujel Mazzini, and our first amendment attorney is James Wheaton. The show is reported and written by me Amy Westerveldt, additional reporting by
Keanna Wilberg in Guyana and Antonio Juhas in DC. We had additional assistants in Guyana from Jamal Thomas, Salvador Deakerre's Wilderness Explorers and the staff at Kaiman House. Special thanks to Michael McCrystal for his help as well. Our theme song is Bird in the Hand by Foreknown sing, A simple song was originally written by Sly and the Family Stone. It's performed in this episode by the Young Ones of Guyana, licensed by BME Music. Additional music by Martin zaltz Ostwick.
Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. Marketing is handled by the Great Maggie Taylor pr and Media outreach by the wonderful folks at Tink Media, Lauren Passel, Ariel Nissenblatt, and Devin Andrade. The show is supported in part by generous grants from the Doc Society, File Foundation, the William Collins Kohler Foundation, and you are listeners. If you would like to support our work, you can sign up for our newsletter at drilled podcast dot com. You can also access
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