By Albert Baldeo
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Scriptures extol us that, “to whom much is given, much is expected.” Luke 12:48. ExxonMobil, your reported declaration that “it’s not our job” to help build Guyana because Guyanese “didn’t vote for us” and that your officials “are not representatives of the people,” is an extraordinary display of corporate arrogance. ExxonMobil cannot celebrate Guyana as a “partner” when collecting its wealth, then treat its development as somebody else’s problem.
Corporate responsibility does not depend on winning an election. It follows from the benefits a company receives, the impact it creates, and the obligations it assumes. You need no electoral mandate to act with fairness, gratitude and basic decency.
Guyana supplies the petroleum, territory, workers, legal protections and generous concessions that sustain your company’s success. Yet, our families continue to struggle with blackouts, high food prices, inadequate infrastructure and unequal access to healthcare, education and clean water. Against those conditions, your remarks convey a chilling message: our wealth is our business; your welfare is your problem.
That is a profoundly selfish conception of partnership. The Government must answer for its own failures, but ExxonMobil must answer for its conduct, and Guyanese are entitled to demand better from both, especially since the wealth on ExxonMobil’s balance sheet flows from a country that is our home, our motherland and our children’s inheritance. Its value cannot be reduced to barrels, dividends or quarterly returns. Exxon’s continued, spectacular, success rests upon access to our petroleum, the labour of our people, the protection of our institutions and the extraordinary concessions Guyana has extended. Such hospitality creates an obligation to reciprocate and does not confer a license as you have characterized.
Indeed, your financial bloom makes that posture harder to defend, as is your reported US$4.67 billion in profits from your Guyana operations in 2025, while your consortium separately recovered approximately US$55 billion in accumulated development investment-two years ahead of expectations! Your company also projected that its free cash flow from Guyana would double by 2030 compared with 2025. Those figures describe substantial rewards already earned and still anticipated from our national patrimony.
Those gains should deepen your commitment to Guyana. A corporation so willing to accept our generosity should require no instruction in gratitude, fairness or responsibility. You cannot embrace Guyana as a partner in your prosperity while dismissing its people’s future as somebody else’s concern.
The 2016 petroleum agreement already offers your consortium formidable advantages: a royalty to Guyana of just two percent, recovery of costs from up to 75 percent of production, tax concessions and contractual stability protections. Such generosity should encourage meaningful reciprocity. Instead, your remarks deepen the impression that ExxonMobil welcomes, and is entitled, to every privilege, while resenting every expectation, or mutuality.
“Sanctity of contract” must never become a slogan for freezing inequality indefinitely. A contract can protect commercial expectations without settling every question of fairness. ExxonMobil can choose to negotiate better terms, ensure greater transparency, and engage in deeper investment in the Guyanese people. Its willingness to make those choices is a test of the partnership it is morally bound to honor.
Guyana’s welcome cannot be treated as weakness, its development needs as an inconvenience, or its citizens as spectators to the extraction of their inheritance. Your company’s prosperity carries responsibilities that extend beyond its shareholders.
We therefore demand from you, full disclosure concerning production, recoverable costs, audits, insurance and environmental liabilities; substantial investment in education, healthcare, technical training and communities affected by petroleum operations; meaningful Guyanese participation in ownership, skilled employment, procurement and management opportunities, and enforceable safeguards, such as protection against oil spills and proper respect for workers, fishermen and indigenous communities and a fairer agreement, transparent, and good-faith renegotiation of the 2016 terms.
These are practical measures by which Guyanese can judge ExxonMobil’s conduct. Advertising and speeches about partnership cannot substitute for fair terms, enforceable safeguards and lasting opportunity.
Mr. Routledge, your company knows how to defend its financial interests. Guyanese have every right to defend theirs. We will judge your partnership by what it delivers to our people, how openly it operates and whether it accepts responsibility for the consequences of its business.
Return to the negotiating table. Disclose fully, share more fairly, invest meaningfully. Speak to Guyanese with the respect their heritage deserves.
Anyone, including you, who is extracting billions from Guyana has no moral right to wash his hands of Guyana’s future.
Respectfully,
Hon. Albert Baldeo
Former Magistrate, Senior State Counsel and State Prosecutor of Guyana
President, One Guyana Beyond Borders