Fred Collins had no idea what he was signing up for when he agreed to become director of Transparency International in Guyana.
A retired mathematics teacher, Collins says when he was approached about the vacancy in 2013, there wasn’t a queue of candidates lining up.
Two years after he accepted the position, ExxonMobil’s oil discovery off the South American country’s coast gave his role a whole new dimension.
Collins was already familiar with the impact oil had on places such as the Niger Delta, in west Africa, and in Guyana’s neighbour, Venezuela, so the news didn’t exactly excite him.
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“I would have had an inkling that oil was not the panacea for economies it appeared to be to some,” he says. “I had hope, but it was a temporary enthusiasm.”
Temporary, because the intervening decade unearthed many controversies, including a production-sharing agreement that vastly favours ExxonMobil and its partners (Guyana’s total take is a mere 14.5 per cent), limited oil-spill liability and plenty of political malfeasance in between.
Collins has challenged many of these issues. In 2023, he and fellow citizen Godfrey Whyte achieved a landmark ruling when they took action against Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to secure a guarantee from ExxonMobil that the company would fully cover any costs associated with an oil spill.
The EPA appealed, and later that year a judge temporarily stayed the order but required ExxonMobil to put up a $2 billion (€1.7bn) guarantee in US dollars until the appeal was heard. A final ruling on the appeal has yet to be made.
Such delays and setbacks for campaigners are commonplace in what Collins describes as “a system that clips civil society’s wings”.
Wherever you are in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, you’re likely not far from an ExxonMobil logo. Whether it’s on a large billboard or the jersey of a cricket team, the company has a strong presence.
Much of that visibility is down to the Greater Guyana Initiative, a $100 million investment by ExxonMobil and its partners in sections of society.
While ExxonMobil Guyana president Alistair Routledge says it’s important it tells its story and is not just a faceless company, environmental campaigner Vanda Radzik believes it’s “a big greenwash”.
“If there was all this oil wealth in Guyana, why would we need to go with a begging bowl to get some trickles from Exxon’s CSR?” she asks, referring to the company’s corporate social responsibility scheme.
Like Collins, Radzik had her day in court, bringing cases against the EPA regarding environmental impact assessments, the transfer of natural gas from offshore to onshore and the handling of hazardous waste – the last case resulted in a resounding win.
“The oil belongs to us, the Guyanese people. It doesn’t belong to Exxon, nor the government. We have to decide on all of it, from top to bottom, which is not happening,” she says.
“So, many of us continue to lobby, protest, agitate and call for the rule of law in Guyana to be applied to this business.”
Sherlina Nageer, founder of Greenheart Movement, uses Walter Rodney’s “groundings” methodology from the late 1960s to engage the Guyanese public in advocating for more sustainable living.
“We basically just sit and talk – break down lofty concepts and have a heart-to-heart with people, often through the arts or simple discussion,” she says.
“We’re really trying to engage Guyanese in thought-provoking conversations about progress and development.”
Nageer says people must question the narrative that progress is an upward, linear thing that we should all aspire to.
“We’re saying maybe we should think before we jump on this train,” she says.
“Maybe we should consider what we might be losing and try to have more nuanced conversations about progress and development.”
Nageer was one of three women who took a lawsuit against the EPA in 2022, claiming it acted unlawfully when it “modified” an environmental permit to allow the controversial practice of gas flaring.
While the case was ultimately dismissed, seeing ExxonMobil join the EPA in its defence opened Nageer’s eyes.
“The EPA is supposed to protect our constitutional right to a clean environment,” she says. “But here they are, partnering against us.”
[ Guyana's high-takes oil and climate debateOpens in new window ]
Guyana’s PPP party, which has failed to renegotiate the 2016 production-sharing agreement, and the main opposition party, the APNU, which signed it, enter a general election on September 1st.
“Whether we win in court or not, our actions are a movement that is creating impact and hopefully change in some of these big oil and gas issues, because the government’s policy is ‘drill, baby, drill’,” Radzik says.
Collins says: “Do you know what the government calls us?” With a laugh, he says: “The usual suspects,” adding: “At 75, I don’t know how much longer I have to live, but I know that if the young people don’t have people like us doing something about these issues, things will get worse.”
Nageer says: “We get labels like ‘the lunatic fringe’, disparaging remarks. I’m not taking it personally. I’m doing what I think a good global citizen should do. And I know I’m on the right side of history.”
This reporting was supported by the Simon Cumbers Media Fund
