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Guyana

ExxonMobil Announces $10 Billion Oil Investment

“Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released part of its latest report on Monday. This scientific summary, focused on how the world can cut greenhouse gas emissions, warns of the extraordinary harm to all of humanity caused by fossil fuels and the need for a rapid energy transition away from oil, gas, and coal, calling for meaningful changes over the next three years. “Such investments will soon be stranded assets, a blot on the landscape, and a blight on investment portfolios.” That same day, oil giant ExxonMobil made an announcement of its own: a $10 billion final investment decision for an oil and gas development project in the South American nation of Guyana that the company said would allow it to add a quarter of a million barrels of oil a day to its production in 2025.

How ExxonMobil Uses Divide And Rule To Get Its Way

Tensions rise between neighboring Guyana and Venezuela over a piece of land that has been disputed since at least 1835. Both Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali and Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro have exchanged sharp words about the status of the Essequibo region, which both countries claim. Since 1990, the two countries have pursued their claims through a United Nations “good offices” process; as recently as 2013, President Maduro and Guyana’s then-President Donald Ramotar said that the discussions over Essequibo were “going well” under this UN framework. Everything changed in 2015, and since then the tensions between the two countries have flared up.
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