Diaspora Engagement

January 27, 2026

Brooklyn, New York

Introduction

Guyana’s 2026 National Budget, themed “Putting People First,” outlines an ambitious fiscal plan of $1.558 trillion, representing a 12.7% increase over the previous year. Presented by the new PPP/C government, the budget is framed as a vehicle for national transformation, financed without the introduction of new taxes. This comprehensive analysis from the Guyana Business Journal examines the government’s strategic vision across four interconnected pillars: the Oil and Gas sector as the financial engine, Agriculture as the anchor of diversification, Human Capital as the foundation for prosperity, and Connectivity as the physical infrastructure for the new economy.

Executive Summary: An Analysis of Guyana’s 2026 National Budget

Guyana’s 2026 National Budget details a fiscal plan of $1.558 trillion, with stated aims of fostering national development and economic diversification. The budget outlines a four-pillar strategy that allocates significant funding to the Oil & Gas sector, Agriculture, Human Capital (Education, Health, and Housing), and Connectivity (Infrastructure). Approximately 75.8% of the total budget, or $1.18 trillion, is allocated to these four areas, indicating their central role in the government’s development plan.

Guyana’s Four-Pillar Development Strategy

The Oil & Gas sector is projected to be the primary driver of GDP growth (17.9% in 2026) and is presented as the financial source for the government’s development agenda. The stated strategy includes expanding oil production to a target of 1.7 million barrels per day by 2029 and developing the Gas-to-Energy (GtE) project. According to the budget, the GtE project is expected to double electricity production and reduce its cost by 50%, which the government anticipates will support the growth of the manufacturing sector.

The Agriculture sector is allocated resources with the stated goals of economic diversification and food security, with a projected growth of 7.6%. The government’s strategy includes investments in traditional industries such as sugar (with a production growth target of 67.9%) and rice, alongside initiatives to promote diversification into other crops, livestock, and agro-processing. These measures are intended to build a broader, non-oil economic base.

A significant portion of the budget, $503.8 billion (32.3%), is allocated to Human Capital through the Education, Health, and Housing sectors. The stated objectives are to improve workforce skills, expand access to healthcare services through new infrastructure and training, and increase the availability of housing through the construction of 40,000 homes and related infrastructure. These investments are presented as foundational to long-term economic development.

The Connectivity and Logistics strategy receives $354.2 billion (22.7% of the budget) for the development of a multi-modal transport network. Key projects include the Linden-Lethem corridor to Brazil, the modernization of coastal highways, the expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), and the development of deep-water port facilities. The government’s stated goal for these projects is to reduce business costs, improve internal and external integration, and enhance Guyana’s position as a transport hub.

The budget documents suggest an interconnected strategy where investments in one pillar are intended to support the others. For example, energy from the GtE project is expected to support new industries, while new transport corridors are planned to open land for agriculture and connect housing to employment centers. The revenue from the oil and gas sector is designated as the funding source for these initiatives. The 2026 Budget, therefore, outlines a plan to utilize resource revenues for broader economic and social development.

Guyana 2026 National Budget: Sectoral Allocation

The Vision for Oil and Gas: Maximizing Value and Building a Resilient Framework

The 2026 Budget allocates resources to the continued development of Guyana’s oil and gas sector and to establishing a governance framework. The stated sectoral vision is based on three pillars: regulation, local participation, and transparency. With a projected 17.9% growth in 2026, the oil and gas sector is the primary driver of GDP growth. Production is forecasted to reach approximately 307 million barrels of crude oil, an average of 840,000 barrels per day from the four currently operating FPSOs in the Stabroek Block.

The government’s strategy focuses on expanding production capacity. The arrival of the Errea Wittu FPSO for the Uaru project is scheduled for the latter half of 2026, with first oil anticipated in early 2027, adding 250,000 bpd to production capacity. This is planned to be followed by the Whiptail and Hammerhead projects, which are projected to bring total production capacity to over 1.7 million bpd by 2029. This production schedule is accompanied by a focus on exploration, with two new Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) signed in late 2025 and a government-led 3D seismic survey planned to inform future licensing rounds.

A central component of the government’s stated strategy is the utilization of natural gas for economic diversification. The Gas-to-Energy (GtE) project in Wales is scheduled to become operational by the end of 2026. The government projects that this will double electricity production and reduce costs by 50%. This is presented as a key factor for the growth of the manufacturing sector, with plans for a second phase that includes an additional 300 MW power plant and a Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) facility. A second natural gas pipeline to Berbice is also in the planning stages to support a new power generation facility and other industrial activities.

The budget also emphasizes the importance of local content, with over 1,200 Guyanese businesses now registered under the Local Content Act, having secured over US$2 billion in contracts. The government has also streamlined the certification process to expedite local business participation. In parallel, the budget reaffirms a commitment to transparency through regular reporting from the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) and adherence to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standards.

The Vision for Agriculture and Food Security: Diversification, Modernization, and Rural Development

The 2026 Budget allocates resources to the agriculture sector, with stated goals of economic diversification and food security. The government’s strategy for agriculture includes modernizing traditional industries such as sugar and rice, as well as promoting diversification into other crops, livestock, and aquaculture. The sector as a whole is projected to grow by 7.6% in 2026.

The sugar industry is targeted for a 67.9% expansion in 2026, with a production goal of 100,041 tonnes. This target is supported by a $13.4 billion allocation to mechanize field operations, modernize factories, and expand value-added production. The stated long-term strategy is to develop the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) into a diversified agro-industrial entity.

The rice sector is projected to expand by 1.8% in 2026, with a production target of 827,500 tonnes. The government’s stated focus is on improving yields through new crop varieties and farming techniques, as well as expanding market access. The budget includes $1 billion for the construction of climate-controlled silos to increase storage capacity.

Diversification is a stated focus, with a projected 9.8% growth in the “other crops” subsector. The budget includes investments in various crops, corn, and soya bean production, and agro-processing. The establishment of an agro-processing port facility at Parika and a fruit pulping hub at Lethem are planned initiatives intended to reduce post-harvest losses and improve export readiness. The livestock and fisheries subsectors are also targeted for growth, with investments in breeding programs, aquaculture, and processing facilities.

The government’s strategy for agriculture extends beyond production to include the development of a more resilient and modern food system. The emphasis on agro-processing, cold storage, and improved market infrastructure is intended to increase the value of agricultural products and create economic opportunities in rural areas. The allocation of resources across a range of agricultural sub-sectors indicates an intention to build a more diversified economic base and reduce long-term dependence on the oil and gas sector.

Comparative Analysis: Projected Growth in Oil & Gas vs. Agriculture

The 2026 budget allocates significant resources to both the oil and gas and agriculture sectors. The oil and gas sector is projected to be the primary driver of GDP growth, while the agriculture sector is allocated resources with the stated aim of supporting long-term economic diversification.

The 2026 projections show the oil and gas sector expanding at 17.9%, compared to 7.6% for agriculture, forestry, and fishing. This reflects the trend from 2025, where oil and gas grew at 21% compared to agriculture’s 11.5%. The oil and gas sector is projected to remain the largest contributor to GDP growth.

2025 Actual Sectoral Growth: Oil & Gas vs Agriculture

2026 Projected Sectoral Growth: Oil & Gas vs Agriculture

The sectoral growth trajectory shows the oil and gas sector growing faster than the agriculture sector. The budget allocates resources to both sectors, with the oil and gas sector providing the primary source of revenue growth and the agriculture sector contributing to broader economic development.

Sectoral Growth Trajectory: 2025-2026 Comparison

Within the agriculture sector, the 2026 budget allocates significant resources to the sugar industry, with a growth target of 67.9%. The rice sector is projected to expand by 1.8%, with the focus on improving yields and market access. The “other crops” subsector is projected to grow by 9.8%, reflecting the government’s stated emphasis on diversification.

Agricultural Subsector Growth Projections for 2026

In terms of production targets, the oil and gas sector is projected to produce 307 million barrels of crude oil in 2026, significantly more than the agriculture and mining sectors. The government allocates $13.4 billion to the sugar sector, indicating a significant commitment to agricultural development.

2026 Production Targets by Sector

2026 Agricultural Sector Budget Allocation by Sub-sector

The Human Capital Investment Strategy: Building a Resilient Nation

The 2026 Budget allocates $503.8 billion to the social sectors of Education, Health, and Housing, representing 32.3% of the total budget. This allocation is presented as a core component of the government’s economic strategy, utilizing oil revenues to foster social and economic development.

The stated rationale for this human capital strategy is that investments in education, health, and housing are foundational to sustainable economic diversification. The budget documents indicate that these investments are intended to be mutually reinforcing, with new social infrastructure planned for developing housing areas and construction programs across all three sectors expected to generate employment.

2026 Social Sector Budget Allocation: Education, Health, and Housing

The education sector receives $183.6 billion, allocated to improve access, quality, and relevance. The strategy includes free university tuition, scholarships for online learning, and financial support to families. Quality enhancement initiatives include teacher training, with a target of 86% trained teachers by 2025, and the provision of textbooks and learning materials. The education system is being modernized through the expansion of the Guyana Digital School and investment in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). University programs in engineering and medicine are being expanded, with a $14.5 billion allocation to the University of Guyana.

2026 Education Sector Budget Breakdown

The health sector receives $161.1 billion, allocated to expand and modernize healthcare infrastructure and services. The infrastructure program includes the construction of a new Paediatric and Maternity Hospital and twelve new regional hospitals, with a $38.6 billion allocation. The strategy includes implementing a national Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, expanding telemedicine, and integrating AI-supported diagnostics. The budget also allocates funds for training over 5,400 nurses and allied health professionals in 2026.

2026 Health Sector Budget Breakdown

The housing sector receives $159.1 billion, allocated for the construction of 40,000 new homes and the development of sustainable communities. The budget includes affordability measures such as subsidies, grants, and tax incentives to support homeownership. An $8 billion allocation is designated for community infrastructure, including drains, recreational facilities, and street lighting. The Silica City smart city project is also included in the housing development plan.

2026 Housing Sector Budget Allocation

The government’s social sector spending represents a significant allocation to education, health, and housing. This allocation is presented as foundational to long-term economic development and the creation of a more equitable society.

Key Social Sector Targets: 2025 vs 2026 Projections

The Connectivity and Logistics Strategy: Infrastructure Development

Guyana’s 2026 Budget allocates $354.2 billion, or 22.7% of the total national budget, to an infrastructure program. The program is described as a multi-modal strategy aimed at creating an integrated logistics network. The stated goals are to enhance internal connectivity, improve regional integration, and develop Guyana’s role as a trade and transport hub.

This investment in infrastructure is presented as a foundational element of the government’s long-term economic plan. The strategy involves using oil revenues to fund the construction of roads, bridges, ports, and energy systems, with the stated aims of lowering business costs, opening new land for agriculture and housing, and supporting the growth of manufacturing and other non-oil sectors.

2026 Infrastructure Sector Budget Allocation

The land transport network receives the largest share of the infrastructure budget at $196.1 billion. The stated goal is to create a modern highway system linking the Atlantic coast to the Brazilian border. The Linden to Lethem Corridor is a central project in this plan. This project, along with new bridges over the Berbice and Corentyne Rivers, is intended to create a reliable, all-weather trade route. In parallel, a series of interconnected highway projects along the coast are planned to ease congestion and improve transport in populated areas. The budget also allocates $50.2 billion to community and hinterland roads to improve connectivity in those areas.

2026 Road and Bridge Projects Budget Breakdown

The strategy for air and river transport is focused on expanding and improving Guyana’s transport gateways. A $3.2 billion investment is allocated for a new arrivals terminal at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), with the aim of developing it into a regional hub. The planned construction of new municipal airports at Rose Hall/Canje and Lethem is intended to decentralize air access and support regional development. The budget also allocates $11.2 billion to modernize the river transport network, including the development of the Parika Ferry Stelling and the dredging of the Demerara and Berbice river mouths. These initiatives are designed to accommodate larger vessels, reduce shipping costs, and support agricultural exports.

The logistics network is supported by a significant investment in energy and water infrastructure. The Gas-to-Energy (GtE) project, with a 2026 allocation of $10.7 billion for its first phase, is projected by the government to double electricity production and reduce its cost by 50%. This is presented as a key factor for the growth of the manufacturing sector. This is part of a broader $119.4 billion energy strategy that includes the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project and a $66.2 billion upgrade of the national transmission and distribution network. The water infrastructure strategy focuses on expanding access to potable water through new wells, distribution networks, and leak detection systems, aiming to serve over 118,000 additional residents.

2026 Energy Sector Infrastructure Breakdown

The budget documents suggest that these infrastructure investments are sequenced to create a multiplier effect. The completion of the Gas-to-Energy project is expected to provide the power needed for new industries. The Linden to Lethem Corridor and new bridges are planned to open land for agriculture and settlement. Modernized ports and improved river transport are intended to reduce the cost of agricultural exports. The expanded road network is designed to connect new housing developments to markets and services. The 2026 infrastructure budget, therefore, outlines a strategy to build a more interconnected nation and provide a physical platform for a more diversified economy.

2026 Major Infrastructure Corridors and Strategic Projects

Conclusion

The 2026 Budget outlines a vision for Guyana’s economic future that utilizes revenues from the oil and gas sector to fund national development. The sectoral plans for oil and gas and agriculture are presented as interconnected, with oil revenues allocated to modernize and diversify the agriculture sector. The stated goal is to create a more resilient and equitable economy.

The successful implementation of this dual-sector growth model will depend on several factors. In the oil sector, meeting production targets while adhering to environmental regulations and maximizing local content will be key. In the agriculture sector, revitalizing the sugar industry and diversifying into new crops and value-added products will require sustained investment and effective program execution.

As Guyana continues to develop as an oil-producing nation, the 2026 Budget provides a framework for utilizing its revenues for national development. The Guyana Business Journal will continue to monitor the implementation of these sectoral plans and provide analysis of their impact on the Guyanese economy.

References

[1] Ministry of Finance, Co-operative Republic of Guyana. (2026). Budget Speech 2026.

Editor’s Note: Clarifying Infrastructure Spending in the 2026 Budget

Following the publication of our analysis of Guyana’s 2026 National Budget, we received valuable reader feedback regarding the percentage allocated to infrastructure. This note aims to provide a clear and detailed clarification on this important point.

Our report highlighted a 22.7% allocation for a thematic grouping we titled “Connectivity & Logistics.” This figure represents a specific subset of the budget focused on projects directly related to economic connectivity, such as transport, energy, and water infrastructure.

However, a broader and more comprehensive measure of infrastructure spending is the government’s total Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP), which accounts for all capital expenditures. For the 2026 budget, the PSIP is $779.6 billion, which represents 50.04% of the total $1.558 trillion budget.

To clarify this distinction, we have prepared the following table and visualizations:

Detailed Budget Breakdown

This table illustrates the relationship between the total budget, the complete capital expenditure (PSIP), and the thematic subset analyzed in our report.

Detailed Budget Breakdown Table

Visual Analysis

This chart provides a visual comparison of the key budget allocation percentages, highlighting the difference between the total capital expenditure and the thematic connectivity subset.

Detailed Budget Clarification Chart

Conclusion

Both figures are correct, but measure different aspects of the budget:

• 50.04% represents the total capital investment in all physical assets across all sectors.
• 22.7% represents a thematic subset of that capital investment, focusing specifically on economic connectivity infrastructure.

We hope this detailed clarification provides our readers with a more precise understanding of the 2026 budget allocations. We thank our readers for their engagement and commitment to ensuring the accuracy of public financial analysis.

The Editors Guyana Business Journal

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Sunday, Jan 25, 2026

Brooklyn, New York

The letter arrived in my inbox, forwarded with a simple note about ongoing discussions and a request for guidance. I opened the attachment and read what has become an all-too-familiar story: a property owner died intestate more than three decades ago, and the property remains titled in the deceased’s name. No one ever applied for a grant of Letters of Administration. The Transport was never updated. Multiple children, some living in Guyana, most scattered overseas across continents and time zones. The attorney’s letter outlined the legal requirements: eleven separate documents to be gathered, coordinated, and submitted. Death certificates, birth certificates, property valuations, consents from all heirs, and a retainer fee to begin the process. Then months of coordination with the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Probate section of the Supreme Court, and government offices across Georgetown. Only then could the property transfer from the deceased’s name to the heirs’ names, assuming all could agree on the disposition.

I read the letter twice, noting the attorney’s careful observation that “family-owned properties often end up with various issues” and the practical suggestion that one heir might “buy out” the remaining shares. The euphemism was transparent. What the attorney meant, but was too professional to state directly, was this: the family property is legally worthless until this matter is resolved, and, given more than 30 years of inaction, resolution seems unlikely.

As I finished reading, a single thought struck me with the force of mathematical proof: this is not one family’s problem. This is Guyana’s problem. And if we don’t solve it now, at the dawn of our oil wealth era, we will squander the greatest economic opportunity in our nation’s history.

We spend considerable ink in these pages analyzing Guyana’s oil contracts, debating the Natural Resource Fund’s investment strategy, and projecting GDP growth rates that would make any economist dizzy. The IMF reports that Guyana led the world with an average annual GDP growth rate of 47% from 2022 to 2024. President Ali speaks of a transformed nation, a “South American Dubai,” where oil wealth will lift all boats and establish Guyana as a regional powerhouse.

But here’s the uncomfortable mathematical truth: you cannot build generational wealth on an inheritance foundation that remains unresolved. You cannot leverage assets you cannot legally prove you own. You cannot transfer prosperity to your children when your parents’ estates remain in legal limbo decades after their deaths.

Guyana is attempting to construct a modern, middle-class economy while simultaneously ignoring a fundamental problem: we have forgotten how to die properly.

Let me present this as a mathematician would. Assume a modest scenario: a Guyanese family owns property valued at GYD 15 million, roughly USD 72,000. The grandmother who held title died in 1990 without a will. She had 8 children, now scattered across Georgetown, New York, Toronto, and London. Under Guyana’s intestacy laws, each child inherited a one-eighth share of the property. One sibling has occupied the house for 33 years. The others have been waiting for “the right time” to address the inheritance.

What is this property actually worth to the family? The answer is zero.

They cannot sell it without unanimous agreement from all 8 siblings—a Sisyphean task when siblings are spread across four countries, four time zones, and often four decades of accumulated family grievances. They cannot mortgage it. They cannot develop it. They cannot use it as collateral for business loans or educational financing. One sibling lives there rent-free while seven others hold worthless paper claims to one-eighth of an asset they can never monetize.

Now consider that many of these 8 siblings may have children of their own. As this second generation comes of age in our oil boom era—perhaps doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs returning to participate in Guyana’s transformation—they discover they’ve inherited not wealth, but legal quicksand. Their “asset” is an undocumented claim to a fractional share of a property they’ve never seen, in a title that’s been dead for three decades. This is not generational wealth. This is generational paralysis.

We don’t have comprehensive statistics—and that absence itself tells a damning story—but conversations with probate attorneys, real estate developers, and mortgage bankers paint a consistent picture. Across Guyana, thousands of properties remain titled in the names of deceased persons. Some grandparents who died before independence in 1966 still appear on property records. Their great-grandchildren, now adults in the oil economy, cannot access what should be their inheritance.

The Deeds Registry, operating under legislation dating to 1919, processes land transactions that can take 12 weeks even under ideal circumstances. But these are not ideal circumstances. Many families have never initiated probate proceedings. They’ve simply waited. Waited for what? For siblings to agree? For someone else to handle it? For the problem to somehow resolve itself?

Meanwhile, the opportunity cost compounds like unpaid interest. That locked property could have been sold to finance a child’s medical education. It could have been leveraged for a small business loan that might now be a thriving enterprise. It could have been developed into rental units, generating income for retirement. Instead, it sits—a monument to bureaucratic inertia and family dysfunction masquerading as an asset on someone’s mental balance sheet.

The problem intensifies when we consider Guyana’s demographic reality. Since the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Guyanese have emigrated. The World Bank estimates that Guyana has one of the highest emigration rates in the world relative to population. More Guyanese live abroad than at home.

This diaspora maintained connections to family land even as they built lives in Brooklyn, Brampton, and Brixton. Parents told children, “We still have the house in Georgetown. That’s yours one day.” Children grew up with a vague sense of property ownership in a country they barely remembered.

Then the parents died. Often without wills. Sometimes, without even telling their foreign-born children the details of the Guyana property. The younger generation discovers they’re beneficiaries of an estate they don’t know how to claim, in a legal system they don’t understand, requiring physical presence or Power of Attorney in a country where they have no current connections.

Attorneys who specialize in these cross-border disputes have documented cases of siblings in Guyana transferring property without their siblings’ consent—sometimes through forged documents, sometimes by exploiting the absent heirs’ ignorance of Guyana’s legal requirements. The diaspora sibling discovers years later that their inheritance was stolen. They may have legal recourse—even in U.S. courts under Long-Arm Statute provisions—but the cost of international litigation often exceeds the value of the disputed property.

The mathematics become perverse: it costs more to fight for your inheritance than the inheritance is worth, so families simply abandon their claims. Multiply this by thousands of families, and you have a massive transfer of wealth from the legitimate but absent heirs to whichever sibling happened to remain in Guyana and act opportunistically. This is not a legal system. This is a lottery where presence beats legitimacy.

Now overlay Guyana’s oil transformation onto this dysfunctional foundation. The government projects that oil revenues will generate USD 7.5 billion annually by 2040. The Natural Resource Fund already exceeds USD 2 billion. Infrastructure projects are underway. Silica City—a planned “smart city” for 60,000 people—represents the kind of ambitious development that requires land, capital, and legal clarity.

A new middle class is emerging. First-time homebuyers. Small business owners. Professionals earning oil-economy salaries. They’re accumulating wealth at a pace their parents never imagined. But if they follow their parents’ example—dying without wills, leaving property in legal limbo, expecting children to “work it out”—we’re simply scaling up the inheritance trap. We’re creating more valuable assets that will become equally useless to the next generation.

Worse, the oil wealth creates new complexities. Consider a Guyanese entrepreneur who builds a successful oil-services company valued at USD 5 million. She has three children: one in Guyana running the family business, one in Houston working for ExxonMobil, and one in Toronto practicing medicine. She dies suddenly without a will or succession plan.

Under Guyana’s intestacy laws, each child inherits one-third of the estate. But what does that mean operationally? Can the Houston engineer and Toronto doctor force liquidation of a going concern? Can the Georgetown sibling buy them out—and if so, at what valuation? If they can’t agree, does a thriving business get destroyed in probate court?

The oil boom is creating precisely the kind of complex estates—business interests, multiple properties, international assets—that most desperately need sophisticated planning. Yet we’re culturally unprepared for this reality. Many Guyanese still treat will-making as morbid, estate planning as something only for the wealthy, and family discussions about inheritance as taboo. This is not cultural preservation. This is cultural suicide.

To Guyana’s credit, Parliament has attempted some modernization. The Civil Law (Rights of Persons in Common Law Union) Act of 2012 granted inheritance rights to common-law spouses in relationships of five years or more. This was progressive legislation that rectified an injustice in which long-term partners could be excluded from estates.

But it also introduced new complexity. Consider a man who dies with both a legal wife and a common-law partner of six years. Both have legitimate claims under current law. He has children from both relationships. Without a will specifying his intentions, the estate must be divided among competing claimants—legal wife, common-law spouse, children from the first relationship, and children from the second relationship.

The mathematics alone become contentious: If the legal wife gets one-third and the common-law spouse gets one-third, do the children split the remaining one-third? Or does each group of children get one-third of two-thirds? And who decides which interpretation prevails? Again, these questions have legal answers. But obtaining those answers requires probate proceedings, attorney fees, valuations, and time. Meanwhile, the property sits in legal purgatory. The 2012 Act was good policy. But good policy without good execution is merely good intentions. And we know where roads paved with good intentions lead.

In 2024, Parliament amended the Deceased Persons Estate Administration Act to allow surviving spouses or heirs to access up to GYD 750,000 from financial institutions without obtaining full probate. Attorney General Anil Nandlall correctly noted that the previous limit—GYD 250, set nearly a century ago—had become absurdly inadequate. This reform will help. A widow can now access approximately USD 3,600 to cover immediate funeral expenses and short-term needs without enduring months of probate proceedings.

But here’s the paradox: the reform improves liquidity but does nothing to address the underlying title issues. That widow might be able to access GYD 750,000 from her husband’s bank account, but she still cannot sell the family house if it’s titled in her deceased father-in-law’s name from 1975. She still cannot mortgage it. She still cannot clear the title for her own children’s eventual inheritance. We’re treating symptoms while the disease metastasizes.

The actual probate process, even under the best circumstances, requires a death certificate, a comprehensive asset inventory, professional valuations, a declaration to the Guyana Revenue Authority, payment of 0.5% process fee, a court application with supporting affidavits, a personal appearance or a Power of Attorney, and a minimum of six to twelve weeks processing time. For a diaspora family coordinating across continents, this is daunting. For a working-class family in Georgetown, the attorney fees alone may seem prohibitive. So they wait. And wait. And wait.

Let me construct a simple model to illustrate the economic impact. Assume 25,000 properties in Guyana remain titled to deceased persons, a conservative estimate. Assume an average property value of GYD 10 million, or USD 48,000. Assume these properties have been in legal limbo for an average of 20 years. Assume a potential annual return of 5% if the property could be leveraged. The total locked capital amounts to GYD 250 billion, or USD 1.2 billion. The lost annual economic activity comes to GYD 12.5 billion, or USD 60 million. The cumulative 20-year opportunity cost reaches GYD 250 billion, or USD 1.2 billion.

In other words, we’ve essentially destroyed USD 1.2 billion in potential wealth—roughly equivalent to one year’s current oil revenues—through sheer legal inertia. But the actual cost is higher because this model doesn’t account for the multiplier effects of unleveraged capital, business opportunities not pursued, education not financed, medical care not accessed, entrepreneurship not attempted, and properties not maintained, which deteriorate. The inheritance gridlock isn’t just a legal inconvenience. It’s a massive destruction of economic value, happening silently, barely measured, largely ignored.

Why does this persist? Part of the answer lies in Guyana’s colonial legacy and subsequent political turmoil. The Deeds Registry system, rooted in 19th-century British colonial administration overlaid on Dutch Roman law foundations, was never designed for a modern, mobile, diaspora population. The Transportation Court procedures assume physical presence and local knowledge.

But culture also plays a role. Many Guyanese view will-making as inviting death—a superstition that would be charming if it weren’t so economically destructive. Others avoid the topic because it requires confronting difficult family dynamics: which child gets the house? How do we divide property fairly between children who stayed and children who left? What if one child contributed more to parents’ care?

These are hard conversations. I understand that. But here’s the harder truth: avoiding the conversation doesn’t make it go away. It simply defers the conflict to your children, who will have the same arguments—except now, in the emotionally fraught context of grief, with you not present to mediate, and with legal complexity you could have prevented.

There’s also a perverse incentive structure. The sibling occupying the family house has every reason to delay estate administration. Why initiate probate when doing so might require buying out siblings or selling the property? Better to maintain the status quo, living rent-free in perpetuity, and let sleeping legal dogs lie. Meanwhile, siblings abroad have high exit costs for pursuing their claims. Filing a probate action from Toronto requires hiring a Guyana attorney, obtaining valuations, possibly traveling for hearings, and managing proceedings from thousands of miles away. For a one-eighth share of a GYD 15 million property—perhaps USD 7,500 after legal fees—is it worth it? The rational economic actor says no. And that’s how wealth transfers from the many to the few through simple inaction.

The solutions are neither mysterious nor particularly innovative. They’re simply hard, and they require coordination across individual, professional, and governmental spheres. Every adult Guyanese should have a will. Period. Not “eventually.” Not “when I’m older.” Now. The requirements are straightforward: a written document signed by the testator and witnessed by two non-beneficiaries. You can accomplish this in an afternoon with an attorney, or even draft it yourself, though professional review is wise. The cost is minimal—often less than one month’s rent.

That will should clearly identify all property, name specific beneficiaries, appoint an executor (consider co-executors in different jurisdictions), explicitly address common-law relationships, provide for minor children, and include provisions for business succession, if applicable. For diaspora families, execute a Power of Attorney for someone in Guyana you trust absolutely—but structure it carefully with accountability mechanisms and specific powers rather than blanket authority. Most importantly: have the family conversation now. Tell your children where the documents are. Explain your reasoning. Give them the attorney’s contact information. Make it easy for them to execute your wishes.

Attorneys should offer estate planning clinics—perhaps pro bono or at reduced rates—to make these services accessible to people beyond the wealthy. The Guyana Bar Association could coordinate a national estate planning awareness campaign. Accountants and financial advisors should incorporate estate planning into standard wealth management discussions. When you’re helping a client invest oil-economy earnings, you should also ensure those investments can actually transfer to heirs. Real estate developers and mortgage bankers should require clear titles and refuse to perpetuate clouded ownership. Yes, this may reduce short-term transactions, but it improves long-term market integrity.

The government reforms needed are neither radical nor particularly expensive. Digitize the Deeds Registry. Moving from a paper-based system to digital records would improve efficiency, reduce fraud, and enable remote access. This is basic 21st-century governance. Expand the simplified probate threshold. If GYD 750,000 is now accessible without full probate, consider raising this to GYD 5 million for estates of minimal complexity. Most Guyanese estates fall below this threshold. Create an online probate filing system. Allow diaspora families to submit documents electronically, pay fees via international wire transfer, and track applications online. Why should a Toronto resident need to physically travel to Georgetown or execute a Power of Attorney for administrative paperwork?

Use oil revenues to fund a national public education campaign about the importance of will-making. Partner with churches, community organizations, and schools. Make estate planning a topic of public discussion rather than private shame. For low-income families, provide subsidized legal assistance for probate proceedings. The 0.5% process fee is manageable; the attorney fees often aren’t. Consider waiving process fees for estates older than 10 years, provided they are initiated within the next 2 years. Create a one-time “inheritance amnesty” to encourage families to clean up titles. Require sellers to prove a clear title going back at least one generation in property transactions. No more accepting transports from sellers who inherited property through undocumented intestacy.

None of this is technically difficult. It’s politically unglamorous—estate planning doesn’t make for exciting ribbon-cutting ceremonies—but the economic impact would dwarf most infrastructure projects.

Here’s the paradox that should motivate action: Guyana’s oil wealth creates both the problem and the solution. The problem is that rapid wealth accumulation without corresponding legal infrastructure creates tomorrow’s inheritance nightmares today. The solution is that oil revenues provide resources to fix the system before the next generation inherits our mistakes.

Right now, Guyana has money. The Natural Resource Fund is growing. The government has fiscal space for strategic investments. This is the moment to build a legal infrastructure that can handle complex, high-value estates. It’s also the moment for individual Guyanese to use oil-economy income wisely. Instead of rushing to buy the second property or the luxury car, perhaps the first investment should be in cleaning up family land titles, hiring an attorney to draft a will, and setting up proper estate structures.

The returning diaspora—professionals with U.S., Canadian, and U.K. salaries—should lead by example. You have the resources to hire good attorneys. You understand the importance of legal documentation from your experience abroad. You can model best practices for families still in Guyana.

And I think about the students I teach at Medgar Evers College, many of them children of Caribbean immigrants. They’re working-class kids, first-generation college students, striving for upward mobility in America. When I ask how many have family property “back home,” most hands go up. When I ask how many know the property’s legal status, the hands go down. They’re inheriting question marks, not assets. And unless something changes, they’ll pass the same question marks to their children.

This essay is written in advance of the Guyana Business Journal’s March webinar on estate planning and generational wealth. We’ll bring together legal experts, government representatives, and practitioners to provide concrete guidance on navigating these challenges. But I want to be clear about what a two-hour webinar can and cannot accomplish. It can provide information. It can answer questions. It can connect you with resources and professionals who can help. It cannot make you execute a will. It cannot force families to have difficult conversations. It cannot substitute for the individual responsibility each of us bears to plan properly. The webinar is a catalyst, not a solution. The solution requires your action.

So here’s my challenge to every reader. If you’re over 25 and don’t have a will, draft one in the next 30 days. If you’ve inherited property in a deceased relative’s name, initiate probate proceedings in the next 90 days. If you have siblings or co-heirs, schedule a family meeting in the next 60 days to discuss inherited property. If you’re a professional—attorney, accountant, financial advisor—commit to incorporating estate planning into your practice.

These aren’t aspirational goals. These are concrete, time-bound actions with measurable outcomes. And if 1,000 readers of this essay take these actions, we will have prevented roughly GYD 10-15 billion in future locked capital. That’s not my estimate—that’s basic mathematics based on average property values and typical family structures. One thousand families, properly planning now, can save Guyana approximately USD 50-75 million in future economic loss. That’s the power of compound interest working in our favor instead of against us.

Guyana stands at an inflection point. We have an opportunity—perhaps a once-in-history opportunity—to transform from a struggling post-colonial economy into a prosperous, modern state. But prosperity without planning is just temporary good fortune. Real generational wealth requires legal foundations, documented ownership, and clear succession pathways.

We cannot build skyscrapers on quicksand. We cannot create a middle-class economy on a foundation of unresolved inheritance. We cannot transfer oil wealth to future generations if we don’t know how to transfer the family house to our children. The inheritance gridlock is solvable. It’s not a natural disaster or an external threat. It’s a self-inflicted wound, and we have the tools to heal it. The question is whether we have the will.

Our grandparents built what they could with the limited resources of their era. They survived colonialism, political turmoil, economic collapse, and mass emigration. They held onto the land, often at great sacrifice, believing it would provide for their children and grandchildren. We dishonor their sacrifice when we let that land sit in legal limbo, unusable and un-leverageable, a monument to our own dysfunction and bureaucratic failure.

The oil is our windfall. But the land—that’s our inheritance. And inheritance, properly managed, compounds across generations in ways that even the most productive oil fields cannot match. Let’s not squander both.

Terrence Blackman is Publisher of the Guyana Business Journal and Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Medgar Evers College, CUNY. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the City University of New York and served as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor of Mathematics at MIT. The views expressed are his own.

The GBJ Webinar “Breaking the Inheritance Gridlock: Estate Planning for Guyana’s Oil-Rich Future” will be held in March 2026. Registration details at www.guyanabusinessjournal.com

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The Guyana Business Journal Editorial Board welcomes reflections and submissions at terrence.blackman@guyanabusinessjournal.com

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We are grateful for the partnership and support of individuals and organizations committed to advancing Guyanese and Caribbean development and human capital investment.

• Courtney Allen
• All Te Networks
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Jan 19, 2025

Editor’s Note

This report documents and reflects on the inaugural 2026 webinar in Guyana Business Journal’s New Visions, New Voices series—a platform created to elevate serious, evidence-based thinking from a rising generation of Caribbean scholars, practitioners, and public intellectuals.

Guyana stands at a rare historical juncture. The scale and speed of economic transformation driven by oil revenues have few precedents in the Caribbean. Yet history offers a sobering lesson: resource wealth alone does not produce durable prosperity. Institutions, skills, social trust, and human capital do. Whether Guyana’s current moment becomes a foundation for long-term national development or a fleeting boom will depend on choices made now—especially choices about people.

This conversation with Omari Joseph was convened deliberately around that premise. Rather than rehearse familiar arguments about oil, growth figures, or infrastructure announcements, the discussion centered on the harder, less visible questions: youth employment, skills alignment, entrepreneurship ecosystems, regional integration, data transparency, climate resilience, and the lived realities facing young Guyanese navigating a rapidly changing economy.

What follows is not a verbatim transcript, nor a promotional summary. It is a structured analytical synthesis intended to preserve the substance of the exchange while situating it within broader development debates relevant to Guyana and the wider Caribbean. Where appropriate, the report integrates comparative insights, policy context, and interpretive framing to highlight why the issues raised matter beyond a single conversation.

Guyana Business Journal launched New Visions, New Voices with a clear editorial conviction: that Guyana’s future will be shaped not only by capital flows and megaprojects, but by whether the nation creates space for rigorous thinking, intergenerational dialogue, and people-centered policy grounded in evidence rather than rhetoric. This series is part of GBJ’s ongoing commitment to fostering that discourse.

The oil will not last forever. The institutions, skills, and opportunities we build—or fail to build—will.

— Guyana Business Journal Editorial Team

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Boston, Massachusetts-On the evening of January 18,  2026, the Guyana Business Journal convened a conversation that cut through the usual noise of Guyana’s development discourse. The inaugural webinar in GBJ’s “New Visions, New Voices” series brought together Prof. Terrence Richard Blackman—mathematician, educator, and GBJ publisher—with Omari Joseph, a young Guyanese and Caribbean development thinker whose credentials belie his years. As a UWI scholar, CAF Regional Prize winner, and emerging voice on human capital and regional integration, Joseph represents exactly the kind of talent Guyana needs at this crossroads moment: Caribbean-rooted, internationally educated, policy-focused, and refreshingly direct.

The central question framing the ninety-minute discussion was deceptively simple: As Guyana experiences unprecedented economic transformation through oil revenues, how do we ensure our greatest resource—our people—are positioned to lead and thrive beyond the oil era? What emerged was a conversation that ranged from youth unemployment and entrepreneurship ecosystems to Caribbean integration, climate paradoxes, tourism strategy, and the role of diaspora in national development. Throughout, Joseph delivered analysis grounded in lived experience and regional comparison, culminating in a challenge to policymakers that was both radical and obvious: all development must be genuinely people-centered, not rhetorically but literally.

The Human Capital Crisis: A Paradox of Growth

Prof. Blackman opened by noting the puzzle at Guyana’s heart: a nation experiencing GDP growth rates of twenty-five to forty percent annually while youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. He asked Joseph to diagnose how chronic underutilization of human capital manifests in Guyana and what costs the nation pays for failing to fully deploy its most valuable resource.

Joseph’s response cut to the lived reality. The primary manifestation, he explained, is youth unemployment despite economic growth—a paradox he had explored in recent video content challenging narratives that young Guyanese are simply lazy or unqualified. The problem, he argued, is not a lack of willingness to work but systematic barriers to opportunity. Graduates in finance find themselves forced into accounting or completely unrelated fields because jobs in their specialization don’t exist or don’t pay enough to sustain them. Medical doctors end up working in logistics or tourism, not by choice but by economic necessity. The skills exist; the opportunities to deploy them don’t.

The geographic dimension compounds this crisis. Rural unemployment is highest, Joseph noted, because job growth concentrates in Georgetown and the East Bank, West Bank, and West Coast corridors. For someone living in Region Five or beyond, the commute costs and time often exceed what they would earn, making employment economically irrational. “For many people, it’s a case where it’s more expensive to work than to stay home,” Joseph explained. “It might sound paradoxical for people who don’t live that reality, but that’s quite literally the case.” Georgetown rent and cost of living have skyrocketed, making relocation unaffordable for workers from rural areas who would need to move closer to jobs.

The result is capital flight—not just financial but human. Disillusioned youth and professionals, seeing limited pathways to meaningful employment despite the oil boom, continue emigrating. The cost to Guyana is measured in lost productivity, eroded institutional capacity, and a generation unable to participate in their nation’s transformation. It’s a pattern Joseph recognized from his CAF prize-winning essay on Latin America and the Caribbean: countries sitting on vast potential while chronically underutilizing their human capital, paying the price in foregone development.

Becoming Roadworthy: Strategic Investments for Competitiveness

When Blackman pressed on what specific investments Guyana needs to make now to prepare for post-oil competitiveness, Joseph outlined a multi-pronged strategy that went beyond conventional prescriptions. Education sits high on the list, he acknowledged, and the reinstitution of free tertiary education represents a significant step, opening opportunities for thousands of young Guyanese to improve their employability and marketability. But education reform must extend beyond access to address what Joseph identified as a critical cultural barrier: the narrowing of career possibilities.

In Guyana, as across much of the Caribbean, youth are funneled toward doctor, lawyer, and other traditional professions from primary school onward. Joseph spoke from personal experience: when he decided to study tourism management at UWI, the response was nearly universal disbelief. “Are you crazy? You should be a lawyer. You should be something else, anything else.” Yet when he graduated, Guyana’s tourism industry was experiencing significant growth—unfortunately stymied by COVID—and in his home country of St. Lucia, tourism is fundamental to the economy. The choice was logical; it just ran counter to cultural orthodoxy.

This matters profoundly in a moment when Guyana needs engineers, technical specialists, renewable energy experts, data scientists, and ecosystem management professionals—not an abundance of lawyers. The misalignment between educational outputs and economic needs creates exactly the skills gaps Joseph described earlier. Public education must expose youth to diverse career paths and align training with actual development challenges rather than inherited prestige hierarchies.

Beyond education, Joseph emphasized job creation in sectors beyond oil and gas, logistics, and construction—the current growth engines. He warned particularly against what he termed “volatile forms of employment,” such as call centers, which politicians tout for creating 500 jobs quickly but which often disappear within 5 to 6 years. “What was 500 jobs created three to seven years ago is now 500 jobs lost,” he noted. Sustainable job creation requires strengthening small and medium enterprises, which Joseph called the “backbone” of economies, typically employing seventy to eighty percent of the workforce. Homegrown SMEs become anchors in communities, places where young people gain their start, hone talent, and eventually help grow medium and large enterprises. Without a strong SME sector, oil wealth creates an enclave economy—growth without broad-based prosperity.

The final element Joseph highlighted was physical mobility infrastructure. Guyana’s low-density, car-dependent, sprawling development model, he argued, limits economic mobility in ways policymakers haven’t fully grasped. Living outside the radius of economic hubs automatically constrains opportunity because connectivity is so poor. The only way to regain independence is purchasing a vehicle, which brings unavoidable monthly expenses—insurance, fuel, maintenance—that many cannot afford. In a small country with low population density, this shouldn’t be inevitable, but decades of suburban-focused development have made it so.

Building the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

Blackman, drawing on his experience serving students from communities facing similar barriers at Medgar Evers College, asked how Guyana could build the entrepreneurship ecosystem Joseph envisioned—creating pathways to mentorship, technical support, networking, and capital access. Joseph’s response emphasized both practical mechanisms and innovative policy.

On mentorship, he noted that top schools provide alumni networks, but other institutions lack this infrastructure, even though talent exists across the board. The question is where attention and resources focus. Systematic mentorship programs must extend beyond elite institutions to reach the full spectrum of Guyanese youth. On capital access, Joseph pointed to recent reforms allowing movable assets as collateral—a model Guyana adopted from St. Lucia—which opens financing possibilities for young entrepreneurs who lack traditional collateral. Traditional bank requirements, with interest rates of fifteen to twenty percent and rigid collateral demands, effectively exclude most young people from business financing.

Then Joseph ventured what he acknowledged might seem radical: reducing the tax burden on the eighteen to thirty-three age group to encourage entrepreneurship and family formation. “That first 15 years of adulthood, from like 18 to 33, is pressure,” he said, and other countries have experimented with tax relief to help youth gain footing. The logic is sound: young people are primarily consumers, meaning whatever money they make circulates back into the economy through rent, purchases, and experiences. Stimulating their economic participation benefits the entire system. International precedents exist for using fiscal policy to encourage youth entrepreneurship; Guyana could adapt these models to its context.

The Optimization Problem: Why Data Matters

Blackman, thinking as a mathematician, posed the question in terms of optimization: Guyana has finite oil resources and multiple competing investment priorities—tertiary education, vocational training, entrepreneurship support, and infrastructure. What’s the optimal allocation for human capital development? Where does investment generate the best returns?

Joseph’s answer was fundamental: before optimizing allocation, Guyana needs two prerequisites currently absent. First and most critical is the availability of public data. The lack of accessible, current, reliable data affects decision-making at every level—government, business, individual citizens. An entrepreneur seeking an opportunity needs industry data and economic indicators to make informed decisions rather than guessing. Joseph referenced the Netherlands, where consulting companies help aggregate public data so prospective business owners can assess viability scientifically. In Guyana, public data is often impossible to obtain, and when available, it’s 4 to 6 years behind, sometimes by over a decade.

The recent release of census data illustrated the problem. After years of calls for information, data finally emerged, but questions immediately arose about accuracy and methodology. Without clean, timely datasets reflecting actual conditions, sound decision-making becomes impossible. Citizens cannot hold leadership accountable. Entrepreneurs cannot rationally assess market opportunities. International investors face unnecessary uncertainty. “Making well-grounded or sound decisions,” Joseph noted, addressing Blackman directly, “and being a mathematician, I think you understand how important that is.”

The second prerequisite is public education about career diversity beyond traditional paths. The cultural fixation on doctors, lawyers, and limited professions creates systematic skills mismatches. Aligning education with development needs requires more than curriculum reform; it requires a cultural shift in how Guyanese conceive of valuable work and successful lives. Only with these foundations—reliable data and diversified career pathways—can Guyana begin optimizing resource allocation across competing human capital investments.

Caribbean Integration: The Capacity Multiplier

Moving to regional dynamics, Blackman noted his long-held belief that Caribbean integration serves as a genuine capacity multiplier and asked how Guyana should approach labor mobility and regional integration in its new economic context. Joseph, drawing on his Eric Williams Prize-winning work on migration as “one of the hinges” of Caribbean integration, offered both diagnosis and prescription.

The CARICOM Single Market and Economy exists on paper, he observed, but remains vastly underimplemented in practice. Free movement provisions for skilled labor go underutilized. Services trade liberalization sits unexploited. The reasons are part bureaucratic inertia, part protectionist mindset, part simple lack of awareness about mechanisms that already exist legally. The barriers run deeper than administrative friction, though. Joseph identified cultural and political factors: lingering fears that openness erodes national or ethnic identity, and, more troublingly, economic dynamics in which some countries view Caribbean neighbors not as collaborative partners but as markets to exploit or threats to guard against.

The result is what Joseph called a “facade of Caribbean integration”—social media banter and rhetorical commitment masking actual economic protectionism and limited policy coordination. Various countries maintain import restrictions on Caribbean goods, while Caribbean multinationals cross borders to buy up local companies without any reciprocal benefit. This represents the opposite of integration’s promise: it concentrates advantages rather than multiplying capacity across the region.

Against this backdrop, Joseph outlined five priority CSME mechanisms Guyana should pursue. First, make it genuinely easier for Caribbean professionals to move and settle across borders—streamlining residency and work permit processes, and making CSME certificate information readily available, especially to young people contemplating regional opportunities. Second, deepen collaboration between tertiary institutions beyond UWI, connecting universities across the region for knowledge sharing, joint programs, and faculty exchanges. Third, build reliable, consistent supply chains that go beyond raw-material exchanges to include remote work collaboration, regional staffing models, and complex value chains. Fourth, leverage collective market size—individual Caribbean nations are too small to achieve scale economies, but integration creates a viable regional market. Fifth, get creative with geography, since unlike Europe’s landlocked nations, the Caribbean must innovate around island separation.

Blackman illustrated integration’s practical value through mathematics education, a crisis he knows intimately from his capacity-building work. Sixty to seventy percent of Guyana’s secondary schools lack qualified teachers for advanced mathematics—calculus, statistics, and advanced algebra—which are prerequisites for the STEM careers an oil-and-gas economy supposedly needs. This is an existential crisis for aspirations in the STEM economy. The CSME solution would bring UWI mathematics faculty on rotational teaching assignments, supplemented with virtual instruction from regional experts, and build a Caribbean Mathematics Education Network. In the short term, this addresses the immediate teacher shortage. In the medium term, it creates a regional professional development infrastructure. Long-term, it builds domestic capacity as trained Guyanese educators eventually contribute back to the regional network. The model demonstrates how CSME can work practically rather than theoretically, mobilizing existing Caribbean expertise quickly rather than reinventing wheels or importing solutions from outside the region.

“Guyana doesn’t need to reinvent every wheel,” Blackman summarized. “Caribbean neighbors have expertise that free movement and integration can mobilize quickly. A small nation of 800,000 trying to build everything independently faces impossible challenges. But as part of an integrated Caribbean region of eight million with shared resources? Suddenly, the mathematics of development looks very different.”

The Migration Question: Developmental Logic Versus Exploitation

An important thread emerged around Guyana’s current migration patterns. Blackman noted, with careful neutrality, that certain forms of labor migration—Venezuelans in construction, Bangladeshis in various sectors, Cubans in trading, Brazilians in mining—seem accepted or even encouraged, while Caribbean regional integration remains underutilized. He asked whether there’s a developmental logic he’s missing or whether the pattern reflects other priorities.

Joseph paused before answering, then offered a frank diagnosis. There is logic, he said, but it’s not national developmental logic for the Guyanese people. The prevailing logic is: “Make things happen as quickly, cheaply, and easily as possible.” Businesses take advantage of the most readily available labor source, particularly one that’s far less regulated than Caribbean professionals who would be bound by CSME labor protections and standards. The rhetoric deployed—”these people work hard,” “they’re more willing to work”—obscures the reality that much of this supposed willingness is a function of vulnerable circumstances that businesses exploit.

What Joseph described, without explicitly using the term, is a two-tier labor system in which migrant workers from certain countries can be employed under conditions and at wages that wouldn’t be legally or politically acceptable for Guyanese or other Caribbean nationals. The business case is clear: lower costs, fewer regulations, maximum flexibility. The national developmental case is much weaker.

From a capacity-building perspective, Joseph argued, investing in local labor keeps wages within the local economy and local communities. Citizens and nationals are invested in developing the country, not just earning money to leave. Regional labor from other Caribbean nations brings knowledge transfer while respecting labor protections that prevent exploitation. Foreign workers from outside the region, while they may contribute during their time in Guyana, often have primary goals oriented toward moving elsewhere. They’re transient in ways that citizens and regional partners are not. “Locals invested in developing the country or the economy as well as developing themselves,” Joseph noted, articulating an ideal that current practice often contradicts.

The conversation revealed a tension at the heart of Guyana’s oil-boom development: between rapid, cheap construction and sustainable capacity building; between maximizing immediate profit and creating lasting prosperity; between business logic and national developmental logic. It’s a tension not unique to Guyana—nearly every resource boom has faced it—but one Guyana must navigate consciously rather than by default.

Climate Paradox: Oil Financing Green Transition

Joseph has won recognition for solar energy advocacy in Guyana, so Blackman pressed on an apparent contradiction: How should a climate-vulnerable nation think about profiting from fossil fuel extraction while building climate-smart development? Joseph’s response was pragmatic rather than ideological.

Guyana, like any country historically, should be able to exploit its hydrocarbon resources for development, he argued. First-world nations built wealth through resource extraction, denying developing nations the same opportunity, while demanding that they bear disproportionate climate-mitigation costs is unjust. However, there must be a simultaneous focus on the future—using oil revenues now to build climate-resilient, renewable-energy infrastructure for later. “You take advantage of the resources in the present to build for that future,” Joseph explained. It’s bridge financing: temporary fossil fuel windfall funding, permanent climate resilience.

Recent developments show this is happening to some degree. Solar farms have been commissioned; projects in Bartica and Mabaruma represent investments in renewable energy. The government has announced and executed several climate-focused initiatives. But Joseph identified a critical gap: clear communication of what climate-sustainable Guyana actually looks like as an end goal. Citizens see individual projects announced, rolled out, and completed, but without an overarching vision, it’s difficult to assess whether Guyana is on track or drifting off course. “We know, okay, this is the goal we’re building towards, as opposed to, we just do this, we do this, we do that, and then however it ends up, it ends up.”

The same uncertainty clouds forest conservation strategy. When the forestry minister makes statements such as “trees won’t stand while people are falling,” it raises immediate questions about long-term vision. What is the plan for forty years hence? Are there reforestation commitments for areas being cleared? What does sustainable forestry look like when oil revenues decline? Joseph’s call was for publicly available goals and data so citizens can track progress and hold leadership accountable. Commitments to achieving certain milestones by 2030, 2040, or 2050 mean nothing without transparent metrics showing whether Guyana is on track.

On youth engagement, Joseph drew on his Solar Challenge experience, where students designed renewable energy solutions demonstrating both awareness and creativity. Young Guyanese are deeply conscious of climate threats in ways previous generations couldn’t be. They’re not a problem to manage; they’re the climate solutions workforce if given platforms and support. The question is whether Guyana will channel its energy systematically or squander it through lack of vision and opportunity.

Tourism: Playing to Unique Strengths

Joseph’s professional background in tourism management brought practical grounding to discussions of economic diversification. Blackman asked how Guyana fits into a Caribbean tourism landscape where the traditional sun, sea, and sand model faces increasing climate threats—coral bleaching, beach erosion, and hurricane intensification.

Joseph was unequivocal: Guyana cannot and should not try to compete on beaches. Its natural positioning is eco-tourism, nature-based tourism, adventure tourism, and cultural tourism. Guyana’s competitive advantages lie precisely in what sets it apart from other Caribbean destinations—pristine interior rainforest, exceptional biodiversity, indigenous communities maintaining traditional lifeways, and cultural uniqueness within both Caribbean and South American contexts. The opportunity is tapping South American and Central American markets beyond traditional US, UK, and “ABC countries” sources, leveraging what makes Guyana distinct rather than imitating what makes Barbados or Jamaica successful.

Indigenous community-led tourism stands central to this vision. The government’s CLOST model—Community-Led Tourism, adapted from the Caribbean Tourism Organization—puts indigenous communities at the center of cultural tourism development. Guyana’s diversity among indigenous nations creates multiple authentic experiences that cannot be replicated elsewhere. However, Joseph warned of significant risks: cultural commodification, negative cultural changes driven by tourist activity, and environmental degradation. These patterns already appear in Caribbean countries practicing mass tourism. The key is treating eco-tourism as a niche product focused on higher value per tourist rather than volume.

“It should never become something where it’s like mass tourism,” Joseph emphasized, “because that will degrade the very environment that the type of tourism relies on.” As connectivity and access improve—making Guyana’s interior more reachable—managing visitor flow and environmental impact becomes even more critical. Done right, tourism generates sustainable revenue while preserving the very assets it monetizes. Done wrong, it destroys what makes Guyana special while creating volatile employment that evaporates when degraded environments no longer attract visitors.

When Blackman asked whether good quantitative models exist for Guyana’s eco-tourism potential—the kind of data-driven projections that could inform infrastructure investment decisions—Joseph acknowledged the gap. Based on observing successful models in other Caribbean, Latin American, and European countries, he believes Guyana has great potential. But the lack of data makes exact profitability projections difficult. Visitor surveys capturing spending patterns and motivations, environmental carrying capacity studies, and economic impact modeling—these foundational research tools remain underdeveloped. Without them, Guyana risks either overinvesting in excess capacity or underinvesting and missing opportunities. As Joseph noted elsewhere, you cannot optimize what you don’t measure.

Diaspora: Asset, Not Loss

Circling back to where their relationship began—a diaspora initiative years ago—Blackman asked Joseph to speak honestly, as a Guyanese youth, about the role diaspora should play in national development. Joseph identified two essential contributions beyond the remittances that already flow at over $400 million annually.

First, capital investment—not just money sent to families but direct investment in Guyanese enterprises and businesses with supply chains connected to Guyana. Joseph cited Mr. Dalgetty’s business model as an example of diaspora entrepreneurship that creates economic linkages. These investments do more than generate returns; they build industries, create employment, and transfer knowledge and practices from international contexts to Guyana.

Second, serving as a brain trust. This goes beyond political advisory roles to systematic knowledge dissemination. Joseph spoke personally: his career choice was catalyzed by exposure to diaspora professionals who showed him “there’s a bigger world beyond what I was intending to do.” That inspiration matters profoundly. Diaspora shouldn’t just send money home; they should mentor young Guyanese, share expertise, connect people to opportunities, and help build industries like film and advanced tourism where domestic experience may be limited.

The prerequisite, Joseph noted, is a patriotic spirit. Much of what diaspora can contribute is “labor of love”—investing time, energy, and resources despite institutional inefficiencies and bureaucratic friction that make doing business in Guyana challenging. That patriotic sense drives persistence in the face of obstacles. It’s already happening with small and medium enterprises started or invested in by diaspora Guyanese, but a concerted effort could scale these contributions dramatically.

Blackman added additional mechanisms: diaspora bonds modeled on Israel’s and India’s experiences; virtual mentorship networks; return-migration incentives through tax breaks and housing support; and formal advisory roles in government and the private sector. The key is reframing diaspora as an asset rather than a loss, enabling brain circulation rather than accepting permanent brain drain.

The People-Centered Imperative

As the conversation neared its conclusion, Blackman posed the ultimate question: If Joseph could give policymakers one central message from this discussion, what would it be? His answer, prefaced with acknowledgment that it might be “somewhat controversial,” was disarmingly simple.

“Policy development and execution must be people-focused and people-centered,” Joseph said. “That includes infrastructure development as well.” He paused for emphasis. “Not rhetorically, but literally. They must be people-centered, and if that mindset guides what they do, outcomes will improve unquestionably.”

The distinction between rhetorical and literal people-centeredness cuts to the heart of Guyana’s development challenge. It’s easy to claim policies serve the people while actually serving business interests, political machines, or personal enrichment. Literal people-centeredness means asking at every decision point: Does this improve opportunities and outcomes for Guyanese citizens? Does this investment in infrastructure actually enhance people’s mobility and access, or does it primarily benefit contractors? Does this education reform align with students’ needs and the economy’s demands, or does it preserve outdated hierarchies? Does this tourism development empower communities, or does it extract value from them?

“It cannot just be business-focused,” Joseph continued. “At the end of the day, you have a population to serve, and improving their opportunities and outcomes will improve overall outcomes.” The logic is straightforward but revolutionary in practice: put people first in education, health, transportation, access to capital, employment opportunity, and environmental protection. Let everything radiate from that focal point.

Blackman enthusiastically endorsed the vision, noting that Guyana’s small size should make people-centered development technically feasible. “It should not be very hard to do that,” he observed. The barriers are political will and entrenched interests, not technical capacity. And the potential returns are transformative—not just economically but socially, creating a nation where citizens feel invested in collective success rather than alienated from a boom happening around them but not for them.

Mathematical Urgency: The Compound Effects of Delay

Throughout the conversation, Blackman returned periodically to his mathematician’s perspective on development, and in his closing remarks, he made the case for urgency through the lens of compound effects. Human capital investment exhibits exponential properties, he explained. A teacher trained today doesn’t just impact 30 students this year; she impacts 30 students annually for 20 to 30 years, totaling 600 to 900 students over a career. Each of those students goes on to impact others. The compound effect is extraordinary.

But it also means the cost of delay compounds mercilessly. Every year Guyana waits to invest in human capital is not just one year lost; it’s decades of compounded impact lost. The mathematics is unforgiving: invest now and compound forward, or delay and fall permanently behind. Trinidad delayed. Venezuela delayed. Nigeria delayed. The pattern across resource-rich nations is clear. Countries that front-load human capital investment during resource booms—Botswana with diamonds, Norway with oil—thrive afterward. Those that don’t collapse when resources run out or prices fall.

Guyana has perhaps fifteen to twenty years of significant oil revenue certainty. Production forecasts suggest activity continuing to 2040 or 2050, but beyond that, global energy transition, price volatility, and depletion create profound uncertainty. The window for transformational investment is now. “As a mathematician,” Blackman said, “I think about legacy. The equations we teach today enable the innovations of tomorrow. The investments Guyana makes in human capital today will determine whether our grandchildren inherit an economy or just memories of an oil boom.”

This temporal framing—thinking in generations rather than election cycles—represents exactly the shift Joseph and Blackman both argued for throughout the conversation. Short-term thinking optimizes for immediate consumption and political advantage. Long-term thinking optimizes for compound growth and permanent prosperity. The choice Guyana faces is not subtle: invest in people now while resources exist to fund transformation, or squander the opportunity and join the long, tragic list of nations that turned resource wealth into a resource curse.

A New Generation Speaking

What made this conversation distinctive wasn’t just the substance—though Joseph’s command of development literature, regional comparisons, and on-the-ground reality was impressive—but the generational perspective he brought. As Blackman noted in closing, Joseph represents a generation not constrained by old political battles and tribal divisions. He can engage development questions on their merits rather than through partisan lenses. His digital fluency gives him global connectivity and access to models and ideas that previous generations encountered more slowly, if at all. His climate consciousness reflects growing up with the environmental crisis as a given reality rather than a distant threat.

Joseph’s response confirms the appetite for this approach. His social media content addressing social issues, development challenges, and opportunities beyond traditional political combat or comedy resonates strongly with youth audiences. Secondary school students at Queens College recognize him from TikTok and approach him to say they watch his analysis of unemployment, race, and employment discrimination, housing costs, and infrastructure needs. A thirteen-year-old consuming content about economic development rather than entertainment speaks to both the quality of what Joseph creates and the hunger among young Guyanese for substantive discourse about their future.

This matters because the future belongs to them—Joseph’s generation and those following—and they must shape it. Older generations, as Blackman suggested, have a facilitator role: creating conditions where young talent can flourish, removing barriers, providing resources and platforms, then stepping back to let new voices lead. The “New Visions, New Voices” series embodies this philosophy, and this inaugural webinar demonstrated its value.

Beyond Rhetoric: The Road Forward

The conversation between Blackman and Joseph covered vast terrain—from skills mismatches and SME financing to Caribbean integration and climate strategy—but common threads unified the discussion. First, the necessity of public data for evidence-based decision-making at all levels. Without accessible, current, reliable information, optimization becomes guesswork, and accountability becomes impossible. Second, the imperative of aligning investments with actual needs rather than inherited assumptions about what development looks like. Third, the power of regional integration as a capacity multiplier for small nations. Fourth, the importance of literally rather than rhetorically centering people in all policy development.

These aren’t abstract principles. They translate directly into concrete priorities: making census and economic data publicly available in usable formats; diversifying career education beyond doctor-lawyer orthodoxy to align with tourism, renewable energy, STEM, and creative industries; implementing CSME mechanisms that enable Caribbean professionals to move freely and collaborate; building SME support ecosystems with mentorship, reasonable financing, and reduced bureaucratic friction; using oil revenues strategically to fund climate resilience and renewable energy transition; developing high-value niche tourism rather than mass tourism that degrades environmental assets; engaging diaspora as investors and mentors rather than just remittance sources; and above all, asking at every decision point whether policies actually improve opportunities and outcomes for Guyanese people.

The window for action is finite. Oil production may continue to 2050, but the global energy transition accelerates, making long-term projections uncertain. Trinidad’s experience looms as a cautionary tale—oil wealth consumed rather than invested, limited regional integration, weak human capital development, and economic crisis when commodity prices fell. Botswana and Norway offer alternative models in which resource revenues funded education and infrastructure, and sovereign wealth funds generated prosperity long after diamonds and oil peaked. Guyana can choose its trajectory, but choosing wisely requires exactly the kind of clear-eyed, people-centered, data-driven analysis Joseph brought to this conversation.

As the webinar concluded and participants logged off across time zones—Georgetown, Brooklyn, London—the sense remained of a conversation just beginning. The Guyana Business Journal will continue the “New Visions, New Voices” series with additional young Caribbean scholars tackling development challenges. Written analysis co-authored by Blackman and Joseph will extend points raised but not fully explored. Questions submitted by audience members will receive video responses from Joseph. The goal is to build ongoing discourse worthy of Guyana’s historical moment—rigorous, evidence-based, genuinely engaged in improving people’s lives rather than scoring political points.

Joseph’s parting words captured the spirit: “When you put your opinions out there, and you’re challenged through that interaction or engagement, that’s how we get better solutions.” Development isn’t a technical exercise conducted by experts in isolation; it’s a collective conversation about shared futures. Guyana stands at a crossroads with unprecedented investment opportunities. The question isn’t whether the nation can afford to build human capital, climate resilience, and inclusive prosperity. The question is whether it will choose to do so before the window closes and the compound effects of delay become irreversible. This conversation suggested a generation ready to make that choice wisely—if given the platform, the data, and the political space to lead. The oil will run out. The question is what remains when it does: an economy built on permanent wealth—educated people, robust institutions, sustainable industries—or just memories of a boom that enriched a few while bypassing the many. For Joseph, for Blackman, and for the audience engaged in this conversation, the answer is not yet written. But the time to write it is now.

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The Guyana Business Journal Editorial Board welcomes reflections and submissions at terrence.blackman@guyanabusinessjournal.com

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• Courtney Allen
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Jan 18, 2025

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Boston, Massachusetts-On Sunday, January 18, 2026, I found myself in a place both magnificent and humbling—Marsh Chapel at Boston University—where the Second Sunday after Epiphany coincided with the annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. The Gothic architecture, soaring organ pipes, and luminous rose window created a setting that reminded me that some struggles —struggles that require reverence, discipline, and resolve —demand sacred space.

The morning was transformed from commemoration to confrontation in the sermon by Professor Harold D. Cox of the BU School of Public Health. His message, organized around the deceptively simple idea of “putting your foot in the door,” was anything but abstract. It was a demand for persistence, for moral courage, and for an unwillingness to retreat when justice is inconvenient. Though preached in Boston, it spoke directly to Guyana’s present moment and to democratic fragilities unfolding across both nations.

Cox grounded his sermon in Luke 11:5–8, where Jesus tells of a man who knocks persistently on his neighbor’s door at midnight, seeking bread for unexpected guests. The neighbor, already in bed with his family, refuses—until the knocking continues. The door opens not because of friendship, Jesus explains, but because of persistence. Cox named it plainly: righteous defiance. Justice does not arrive because the powerful feel generous. It arrives because ordinary people keep knocking, keep pushing, and refuse to move.

When Cox shared his own family history, the sermon’s moral force became evident. His father, a United Methodist minister, participated in the Woolworth’s lunch-counter sit-ins of the 1960s. As a child, Cox could not understand why his family never sat at the counter, despite the smells of pies and coffee. The reason was simple: Black people were not allowed. When his father and others sat anyway, they were arrested. Cox recalled the day his father returned home from jail and held his sons, repeating quietly, “I love you.” He did not call it activism or protest. He simply understood that a door was closing—and he refused to step back.

That story crystallized the sermon’s core truth: resistance to injustice is not theoretical. It is personal, costly, and animated by love for those who will inherit the world we shape.

Cox then named the doors closing in contemporary America. Doors are closing on families unable to pay rent; on immigrants seeking opportunity; on LGBTQ+ youth through legislation and silence; on people of color through the erasure of history—books banned, museum exhibits questioned, conversations shut down; and on democracy itself through voter suppression and institutional usurpation, inertial and decay. These are not symbolic doors, Cox insisted. They are doors of safety, dignity, and survival. The congregation recognized what many of us sense but are struggling to name: democratic backsliding is no longer hypothetical.

Listening from the pews, I could not help but draw parallels to Guyana.

The door of transparent oil governance remains under constant pressure. Despite Natural Resource Fund legislation and formal oversight, unresolved questions persist about beneficial ownership, contract terms, and whether oil revenues meaningfully reach ordinary Guyanese. Will this door remain open through persistent civic demand, or close quietly through opacity and elite capture?

The door of inclusive development is also under strain. Oil wealth has produced a two-track economy—those connected to the boom and those left behind. In Georgetown, Linden, and rural communities, citizens ask whether prosperity is national or selective. Inequality, if unaddressed, will permanently close doors.

Our democratic integrity remains fragile, and the question is whether Guyana will defend the mechanisms that kept the democratic door open—independent electoral management, civil society vigilance, adherence to the country’s laws, and international scrutiny—or allow them to erode through fatigue and normalization.

Press freedom and civic space face threats: legal intimidation, strategic silence, and self-censorship. These are the mechanisms by which doors close without ceremony. Environmental sustainability, too, is at risk as oil-driven development accelerates. Forests, rivers, and coastal communities face pressures that could shut the door on ecological resilience for generations.

Cox did not offer easy answers. He offered a framework. Stay curious. Ask hard questions. Know your neighbor, because love without knowledge is abstraction. Tell your stories—especially those that break your heart just enough to compel action. For Guyana, that means documenting how oil wealth does—or does not—transform lives. It means amplifying the voices of Amerindian communities, youth priced out of housing, and families struggling despite national growth.

Above all, he insisted we must act. Volunteer. Speak when silence is safer. Vote. Give. Choose one door and hold it open. But understand this: if justice does not cost you something—if it does not make you uncomfortable—you are likely not doing the work justice requires. His father risked arrest. Dr. King gave his life. Justice has never been convenient.

The liturgy itself reinforced this call. The Exodus reading reminded us that God hears the cries of the oppressed but works through human agents who must step forward despite fear. Ephesians urged us to stand firm, recognizing that injustice is sustained not only by individuals but by deeper systems and powers. Epiphany—the season of divine manifestation—demands response. Light encountered but not acted upon becomes judgment.

Dr. King’s work, Cox reminded us, is unfinished. This is not nostalgia. It is a responsibility. For Guyana, independence, constitutional democracy, and resource wealth are not endpoints. They are opportunities—and tests.

King’s vision of the beloved community was never confined to America. It imagined a world where dignity is universal—where injustice is confronted, whether it appears in Mississippi or Mahaica, Alabama, or Sophia.

Perhaps the sermon’s hardest truth was this: comfort is justice’s greatest enemy. Justice is not a value we debate; it is a verb. In Guyana, oil prosperity tempts us to settle for improvement rather than equity, silence rather than scrutiny. But the Woolworth’s counter reminds us that patriotism sometimes requires disruption—knocking at midnight when retreat would be easier.

Moving between Brooklyn, Boston, and Georgetown, I see the parallels clearly. Both nations face democratic tests. Both must decide whether the values they proclaim will be the values they defend. To my American citizens: the doors closing around immigration, history, housing, and voting are real. Keep your foot in the door. To my fellow Guyanese: oil wealth will either open doors for all or entrench new hierarchies. Only our action decides which.

The service closed with the Gloria Patri—a reminder that justice must be reclaimed by every generation. Doors once forced open can close again if pressure fades. Yet we do not struggle alone. The God who heard cries in Egypt, who sent prophets to demand justice, who embodied love in action, stands with those who refuse to move.

Leaving Marsh Chapel this morning, walking down Commonwealth Avenue where Dr. King once walked as a doctoral student, Cox’s charge stayed with me: put my foot in the door—here, now, in 2026—and keep it there until someone is fed, housed, seen. Hold it open with courage and righteous defiance. Then justice will not merely arrive. It will enter and take up residence.

This is the work before us—in Guyana, in America, wherever doors are closing on human dignity. The question is not whether we have resources or power. The question is whether we have the persistence, courage, and love to keep knocking.

Dr. King held the door open. His generation held it open. Now it is our turn.

Will we keep our foot in the door?

Terrence Richard Blackman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, and Founder and Publisher of the Guyana Business Journal. He worships at Marsh Chapel when visiting Boston.

Editor’s Note

This essay grows out of a Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday sermon delivered at Marsh Chapel, Boston University, and reflects on its resonance far beyond that sacred space. Drawing on biblical metaphor, personal memory, and contemporary political realities, the piece invites readers to consider what it means to persist—to keep one’s “foot in the door”—when justice is threatened by complacency, comfort, or power.

By placing the American civil rights struggle in conversation with Guyana’s present crossroads in the era of oil and democratic testing, the essay underscores a central conviction of Guyana Business Journal: that development without accountability, prosperity without inclusion, and democracy without vigilance are doors that quietly close. The reflections that follow are offered not as nostalgia or moral display, but as a call to responsibility—one that asks each generation to decide whether it will merely inherit hard-won freedoms or actively hold them open.

— Guyana Business Journal Editorial Team

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We are grateful for the partnership and support of individuals and organizations committed to advancing Guyanese and Caribbean development and human capital investment.

• Courtney Allen
• All Te Networks
• Corine Locke
• Tony Harris
• Richard Alsopp

 

 

 

Jan 15, 2026

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Boston, Massachusetts-Recent commentary suggesting that Guyana’s flagship offshore oil projects are “on track to dry up” within a few years reflects a fundamental misunderstanding—not of Guyana’s geology, but of how oil fields are engineered, modeled, and managed. The production profiles for Liza Phase 1, Liza Phase 2, and Payara, when read properly, tell a far more sober and instructive story.

The chart accompanying this article, titled Production Profile for Liza 1, Liza 2, and Payara, presents projected production in thousands of barrels per day from 2019 through mid-century. It is not a warning sign. It is a textbook illustration of managed offshore reservoir development governed by well-established decline dynamics. To understand why, one must first understand the theory behind decline curves.

At a fundamental level, decline curves are empirical tools developed in petroleum engineering to describe how oil and gas production changes over time once a field is brought on stream. First formalized by J.J. Arps in 1945 [1], decline curve analysis begins with a simple physical reality: as hydrocarbons are produced, reservoir pressure declines, flow resistance increases, and production rates naturally fall. Rather than assuming constant output until sudden exhaustion, decline curves model this process mathematically using exponential, hyperbolic, or harmonic functions, each corresponding to different reservoir behaviors.

Arps’ work established three fundamental types of decline based on empirical observations of field behavior. Exponential decline assumes a constant fractional rate of decline, appropriate for reservoirs operating under boundary-dominated flow with constant pressure conditions. Hyperbolic decline, characterized by a decline exponent between 0 and 1, captures the more gradual flattening of production rates observed in many reservoirs as they mature. Harmonic decline represents the limiting case where the decline exponent equals 1, often observed in naturally fractured reservoirs or under certain drive mechanisms [2]. Modern applications extend Arps’ framework considerably. Fetkovich (1980) integrated decline curve analysis with the type curves derived from transient flow theory, providing a more rigorous physical basis for matching field performance[3]. Robertson (1988) addressed the tendency of hyperbolic decline to overestimate long-term reserves when applied mechanically, proposing methods to constrain tail production using physical limits[4]. More recently, Valko and Lee (2010) developed probabilistic decline curve methods that account for uncertainty in both historical data and future performance[5].

Crucially, the purpose of decline curves is not to predict when oil “runs out.” Their purpose is to forecast future production rates, estimate cumulative recovery, and determine the field’s economic life under specific operating assumptions. In practice, decline curves are updated continuously as new production data becomes available, making them adaptive forecasting tools rather than fixed predictions. Properly applied, they replace simplistic arithmetic with physics-informed expectations about how production evolves gradually over decades, not abruptly over years.

With that framework in place, the Liza and Payara curves can be read correctly. The production profiles for these three projects share a common and deliberate structure that begins with a ramp-up phase. Production rises rapidly as wells are sequentially brought online and FPSO facilities reach safe operating limits as established by the governing EIA. Liza Phase 2, in particular, climbs quickly into the 220–250 thousand barrels per day range. This is not evidence of reckless extraction. It reflects standard offshore project economics: early production is accelerated to recover capital costs and stabilize operations.

Following this initial surge comes the peak or short plateau, roughly between 2024 and 2026. This point is frequently misinterpreted in public discourse. The peak does not signal that the reservoir is “running out.” Instead, it marks the transition from facility-constrained to reservoir-controlled production, in which flow behavior is governed by pressure management rather than surface capacity. What follows is the managed decline phase. Here, the curves slope downward smoothly, not precipitously. This portion of the chart closely resembles hyperbolic decline behavior—steeper declines early on that gradually flatten over time. This is exactly what one expects from offshore reservoirs supported by water injection, gas handling, and disciplined well management.

The curves then extend into a long tail of lower production. By the late 2030s and 2040s, output levels fall into the 30–50 thousand-barrel-per-day range and persist well beyond 2050. This long tail is often overlooked, yet it can account for a substantial share of total recoverable reserves over a field’s life. Fields rarely stop producing because oil disappears; they stop when production becomes uneconomic. At no point do the curves collapse. At no point do they approach zero abruptly.

Claims that Liza One or Liza Two will “dry up” within two or three years rely on a simplistic calculation: remaining barrels divided by current daily production. This approach assumes constant production indefinitely, ignoring decline dynamics altogether. The chart itself refutes that assumption. Production is designed to decline. It always has been. The relevant question is not when oil physically disappears, but when continued production no longer makes economic sense. Those are very different endpoints, governed by price, costs, and policy—not by arithmetic. The curves show decades of continued production, albeit at diminishing rates. That is not depletion. It is planned maturation.

Reading these curves correctly does not invite complacency. It demands seriousness. They tell us that peak oil revenue is temporary, that decline is predictable, and that Guyana has a finite window in which to convert petroleum wealth into durable national capacity. That means disciplined management of the Natural Resource Fund, sustained investment in education and infrastructure, and a deliberate strategy for economic diversification beyond oil. The danger is not that the oil will suddenly vanish. The danger is mistaking early abundance for permanence.

The production profiles for Liza Phase 1, Liza Phase 2, and Payara do not show fields on the verge of drying up. They show competently engineered offshore projects following well-understood decline curve dynamics. Misreading these curves leads to alarmism, poor journalism, and bad policy. Reading them correctly buys something invaluable: time—time to plan wisely, time to invest strategically, and time to build an economy that endures beyond the oil.

References

[1] Arps, J.J. (1945). “Analysis of Decline Curves.” Transactions of the AIME, 160(01), 228-247.

[2] Arps, J.J. (1945). “Analysis of Decline Curves.” Transactions of the AIME, 160(01), 228-247. See also: Fetkovich, M.J., Vienot, M.E., Bradley, M.D., and Kiesow, U.G. (1987). “Decline Curve Analysis Using Type Curves—Case Histories.” SPE Formation Evaluation, 2(04), 637-656.

[3] Fetkovich, M.J. (1980). “Decline Curve Analysis Using Type Curves.” Journal of Petroleum Technology, 32(06), 1065-1077.

[4] Robertson, S. (1988). “Generalized Hyperbolic Equation.” Presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Houston, Texas, October 2-5. SPE-18731-MS.

[5] Valko, P.P., and Lee, W.J. (2010). “A Better Way to Forecast Production from Unconventional Gas Wells.” SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Florence, Italy, September 19-22. SPE-134231-MS.

Editor’s Note

Recent public discussion about Guyana’s offshore oil fields has included claims that misinterpret standard petroleum engineering concepts, particularly around production decline and depletion. This article is intended to clarify how decline curves are actually read and used by engineers and policymakers, using the publicly available production profiles for Liza Phase 1, Liza Phase 2, and Payara. The goal is not advocacy, but accuracy—so that national conversations about oil, revenue, and long-term planning are grounded in sound technical understanding rather than misleading arithmetic.

— Guyana Business Journal

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The Guyana Business Journal Editorial Board welcomes reflections and submissions at terrence.blackman@guyanabusinessjournal.com.

Jan 11, 2025

In moments of geopolitical tension, small states are often encouraged to take comfort in moral clarity, legal correctness, and international sympathy. These matter. But history suggests they are not enough. What ultimately separates states that endure from those that are repeatedly tested is not righteousness alone, but the ability to translate legitimacy into permanence. This distinction—between being right and being secure—is where many national conversations falter.

Guyana now finds itself at such a juncture. The Essequibo controversy, long familiar but newly sharpened by oil, shifting regional power, and global uncertainty, demands more than reassurance or rhetorical confidence. It demands disciplined thinking about the future: how today’s advantages are protected against tomorrow’s volatility; how law is reinforced by diplomacy, economics, and security; how sovereignty becomes assumed rather than contested.

This essay turns to an old text not for comfort, but for clarity. Thucydides’ account of the Melian Dialogue is often read as a parable of cruelty. Read carefully, it is something more unsettling—and more useful. It is a meditation on structure, on time, and on what happens when small states mistake moral certainty for strategic durability. For Guyana, the relevance is not academic. It is immediate.

What follows is not a call to abandon principle, nor an argument for bravado. It is an invitation to a harder conversation: how Guyana can shape conditions now so that its sovereignty over Essequibo becomes effectively irreversible—regardless of shifts in Caracas, Washington, or the wider world. This is not a conversation about fear. It is a conversation about seriousness.

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Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue is often reduced to a single, chilling line—the strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must. But its deeper lesson is not cruelty. It is structure. The dialogue warns us about what happens when a small state confuses moral certainty with strategic permanence.

Melos believed that justice, sympathy, and hope would protect it. Athens believed that outcomes are shaped by leverage, alliances, and the ability to make one’s position endure over time. The tragedy is not that Melos appealed to justice; it is that Melos failed to convert justice into an irreversible outcome.

Guyana is not Melos.

Guyana is legally grounded, internationally recognized, and embedded in regional and global institutions in ways Melos never was. Yet the strategic question is strikingly similar.

How does a small state turn legitimacy into permanence in a world where power still operates, interests shift, and alliances evolve?

In the context of Essequibo—especially in the oil-and-gas era—the objective cannot simply be to be right.

The objective must be to make Guyana’s sovereignty over Essequibo effectively irreversible, regardless of which government is in power in Caracas or Washington over the next two decades.

The greatest temptation for small states is to treat the present alignment of forces as stable. When international opinion is favorable, legal arguments are strong, and partners offer public support, it is easy to assume the trend will hold. The Melian Dialogue cautions against this comfort. Circumstances change. Interests realign. External guarantees weaken or disappear. A strategy that rests on today’s mood is not a strategy; it is a wager. Guyana’s challenge is therefore not simply to win arguments in the present, but to shape the future so that those arguments no longer need to be fought.

This requires thinking in terms of path dependence—building structures now that narrow the range of future outcomes. Small states do not secure themselves by overpowering larger neighbors. They secure themselves by embedding their position into systems of law, commerce, diplomacy, and security so thoroughly that reversal becomes prohibitively costly. The aim is to transform sovereignty from a claim that must be repeatedly defended into a fact taken for granted in everyday practice.

For Guyana, this begins with law, but it cannot end there. Legal legitimacy must be operationalized until it becomes routine. Sovereignty over Essequibo must be reflected not only in court filings, but in contracts, financing arrangements, insurance assessments, regulatory practices, and international partnerships. When investors, lenders, and insurers treat Essequibo as settled Guyanese territory, the dispute loses practical oxygen. Law becomes power not when it is pronounced, but when it is embedded everywhere.

Diplomacy must work in the same direction. The goal cannot be episodic expressions of support; it must be durable stakeholding. Regional actors should have tangible economic, security, and reputational interests in the stability of Essequibo. When instability threatens trade routes, infrastructure projects, energy cooperation, or regional cohesion, the dispute ceases to be bilateral and becomes collective. This is how small states shift the balance—by making their security inseparable from others’.

Security, too, must be approached with sobriety rather than theatrics. Guyana does not need provocation or symbolism. It needs credibility. Surveillance, maritime and air domain awareness, interoperability with trusted partners, and institutionalized cooperation quietly change calculations. Deterrence, properly understood, is not about confrontation; it is about buying time and reducing temptation. It creates space for law and diplomacy to do their work.

None of this succeeds if the state itself lacks coherence. The Melian Dialogue implies that internal weakness invites external pressure. Guyana’s long-term position, therefore, depends as much on domestic discipline as on foreign alignment. Professional institutions, transparent governance—especially in the oil sector—and a national consensus on sovereignty that transcends partisan cycles are not abstract ideals. They are strategic assets. A state that governs itself seriously is harder to intimidate and easier to support.

There is also a caution embedded in Thucydides for those who wield power. Athens’ realism curdles into arrogance, and arrogance into collapse. For Guyana, this is a reminder to avoid triumphalism. The task is not to humiliate a neighbor or to confuse advantage with invulnerability. The task is to secure sovereignty with restraint, dignity, and foresight. A strategy grounded in patience and discipline is not weakness; it is wisdom.

The Melian Dialogue, read carefully, is not an invitation to despair. It is a call to seriousness. It tells small states that hope must be engineered into institutions, alliances, and capabilities if it is to endure. Guyana still has the opportunity to build that architecture deliberately, before circumstances force reactive choices. The measure of success will not be how loudly Guyana asserts its rights, but how quietly and firmly those rights become unmovable.

That is the conversation the country must now be prepared to have.

Editor’s Note

In early January 2026, the geopolitical landscape of Venezuela shifted abruptly when U.S. military and law enforcement forces carried out a large-scale operation in Caracas that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro was subsequently flown to the United States to face federal charges, including allegations of drug trafficking and related offenses, in a Manhattan courthouse, where he and Flores have pleaded not guilty.  

In the immediate aftermath, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice declared Maduro temporarily unable to exercise authority and ordered Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the role of acting president, a move endorsed by the Venezuelan armed forces. Rodríguez’s interim leadership is controversial; many international actors do not recognize its democratic legitimacy, and the domestic political situation remains fragile. 

U.S. President Donald Trump publicly stated that the United States would oversee Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be established, and that American involvement—including engagement with Venezuelan oil infrastructure—might persist for an extended period. This approach has reignited debate over foreign intervention, regional sovereignty, and the role of external powers in Latin America’s internal affairs. 

These events complicate the strategic environment in which Guyana must operate. A small state seeking to make its legal and diplomatic gains irreversible cannot afford to treat seismic shifts in a neighboring power as mere temporary disruptions. Instead, Guyana’s strategy should account for the reality that power relations in the region are volatile and that shifts in governance—whether in Caracas or Washington—can have direct and indirect consequences for Guyana’s national security, economic interests, and regional standing.

— Guyana Business Journal

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Jan 07, 2025

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Guyana stands at a transformative juncture in its history. The nation’s burgeoning oil and gas sector is fueling unprecedented economic growth, with the International Monetary Fund reporting average real GDP growth of 47% from 2022 to 2024 and projecting average annual growth of 14% over the next five years [1]. This economic boom is driving a surge in demand for air travel, from business and diaspora traffic to educational and medical mobility. International passenger movements at Guyana’s main airports have skyrocketed by 375% in just four years, from 205,297 in 2020 to 938,715 in 2024, and are on track to exceed one million in 2025 [2]. This dramatic increase in demand, coupled with the entry of ten new international carriers since 2020, underscores the urgent need for a strategic approach to aviation. The current reliance on foreign hubs in Miami, Panama, and Port of Spain creates a fragmented and costly travel experience for Guyanese citizens and businesses. This context makes it imperative to revisit the concept of a national airline, not as a nostalgic revival of a failed enterprise, but as a strategic piece of national infrastructure designed to connect Guyana to the world and catalyze its development. This paper will explore lessons from Turkish Airlines’ successful hub strategy and the cooperative and cautionary tales of the Nordic aviation model to propose a new vision for a Guyanese flag carrier—one that is commercially grounded, geopolitically aware, and realistically scaled for the 21st century.

Lessons from Turkish Airlines: Scale Through Hub Strategy

The story of Turkish Airlines offers a powerful blueprint for how a national carrier, operating from a non-traditional hub, can achieve global scale and strategic influence. For decades, Turkish Airlines was a modest state-owned enterprise. However, a strategic shift in the early 2000s, centered on leveraging Istanbul’s unique geographic position at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, transformed it into a global aviation powerhouse. The airline now flies to more countries than any other carrier, with a network spanning nearly 300 international destinations [3]. The core of its success lies in the hub-and-spoke model, which maximizes passenger loads and operational efficiency by connecting the majority of its flights through the new Istanbul Airport, a mega-hub where it commands nearly 80% of the market share [4]. This dominance has made Istanbul the world’s most connected airport, surpassing established hubs like Frankfurt [4].

Several key elements of the Turkish model are directly relevant to Guyana’s aspirations. First is aggressive route diversification. Turkish Airlines built its network by not only serving major global cities but also by connecting secondary markets and underserved regions, particularly in Africa and Central Asia, that other major carriers often overlook [4]. This strategy allowed it to tap into new markets that lacked direct international service. For Guyana, this suggests an opportunity to position Georgetown as a natural bridge between Northern South America, the Caribbean, and West Africa, serving not just the obvious diaspora routes to New York and Toronto, but also creating new trade and travel corridors. Second is the principle of state backing with commercial discipline. While Turkish Airlines benefits from its state-owned status, it operates with a strong commercial focus, aiming to reach a fleet of 800 aircraft and consolidated revenue of over $50 billion by 2033 [3, 4]. This is not a vanity project but a commercially driven enterprise aligned with national interests. Third, the airline integrated strong cargo operations alongside its passenger service, recognizing the importance of logistics in a globalized economy. For Guyana, with its growing agricultural, pharmaceutical, and other time-sensitive exports, a national carrier with a dedicated cargo strategy could be a significant economic enabler. Finally, Turkish Airlines’ success stems from aligning tourism, trade, and diplomacy with its airline strategy. The airline is a tool of national policy, extending Turkey’s influence and economic reach. A reimagined Guyana Airways could similarly serve as a flying ambassador, supporting the nation’s diplomatic and economic goals in a post-oil future.

Lessons from the Nordic Model: Cooperation and Caution

The Nordic countries offer a different yet equally valuable set of lessons for national aviation strategy. The experiences of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and Norwegian Air Shuttle provide a dual perspective: one on the power of regional cooperation and the other on the perils of over-ambitious, debt-fueled expansion. Together, they illustrate that airlines can be nationally meaningful without being fiscally reckless, and that for smaller markets, cooperation often trumps isolation.

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS): Cooperative Sovereignty

For over 70 years, SAS stood as a unique icon of regional cooperation, jointly owned by the governments and private investors of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden [5]. Founded in 1946 as a consortium to pool the transatlantic operations of the three nations’ airlines, it was built on the principle of shared risk, shared governance, and shared connectivity [5]. This multi-state ownership model allowed three small countries to create a single, viable international carrier capable of competing on a global scale, something none could have achieved alone. The model emphasized long-term viability, reliability, and safety, and for decades, it was a resounding success. SAS was a co-founder of the Star Alliance and pioneered polar routes, becoming a symbol of Scandinavian ingenuity [5]. The key takeaway for Guyana is the power of partnership. A small nation entering the capital-intensive airline industry can mitigate risk and enhance its market power by joining forces with a compatible partner. The SAS model demonstrates that sovereignty need not be absolute; it can be pooled to achieve a greater strategic objective.

Norwegian Air: Discipline and Limits

In contrast, the story of Norwegian Air Shuttle serves as a critical cautionary tale. The airline embarked on an aggressive, low-cost, long-haul expansion strategy, rapidly growing its fleet with modern, fuel-efficient aircraft [6]. However, the model proved unsustainable. The company became, in the words of one analyst, “levered to the hilt,” with its debt-to-asset ratio exceeding 60% [6]. The airline was plagued by a series of challenges, including intense competition, operational issues with its Boeing 787 Dreamliner engines, the grounding of its 737 MAX fleet, and a misguided fuel-hedging strategy [6]. After failing to secure a buyer and burning through cash, Norwegian was forced to abandon its long-haul ambitions in January 2021, emerging from bankruptcy as a smaller, regional carrier [7]. The failure underscores the immense risks of rapid, debt-financed growth in the notoriously thin-margined airline industry. For Guyana, the lesson is clear: ambition must be tempered with fiscal discipline. The allure of rapid expansion can quickly lead to financial ruin. The Norwegian experience highlights the critical importance of right-sizing ambition to match market realities and maintaining a lean, efficient operation.

Why the Old Guyana Airways Failed—and Why That Matters

Before charting a new course, it is crucial to understand why the previous national carrier, Guyana Airways, ultimately failed. Nostalgia for the old airline is understandable, but it cannot substitute for a sober analysis of the economic and governance failures that led to its demise in 2001. The airline, founded in 1939 as British Guiana Airways, was plagued by structural weaknesses that made its eventual demise almost inevitable [8]. A critical examination of these failures provides a clear checklist of what a new national carrier must avoid.

First and foremost was political interference. From its early days as a government-subsidized private entity to its full nationalization, the airline was never truly independent of political influence. This led to decisions that were not always commercially sound, contributing to a culture of dependency rather than accountability. Second, the airline suffered from weak capitalization and a crippling drug trade, which reportedly led to significant fines [9]. The airline ultimately went bankrupt in 1999, and its successor, Guyana Air 2000, ceased operations in 2001 [8]. Third, the airline pursued overambitious routes with a poor fleet strategy. It leased a hodgepodge of aircraft—from Russian Tupolevs to American Boeings and European Airbuses—creating a maintenance and training nightmare and preventing any operational efficiency [8]. This lack of a coherent, long-term fleet strategy made it impossible to compete effectively. The lesson from the past is unequivocal: a new Guyana Airways cannot be a repeat of the old. It must be built on a foundation of sound governance, robust economics, and a clear-eyed strategy that is insulated from the mistakes of the past.

A New Vision: Guyana Airways as a Strategic Joint Venture with Caribbean Airlines

A reimagined Guyana Airways, or “Guyana Airways 2.0,” should not be a go-it-alone venture. The lessons from SAS and the failures of the past point toward a more prudent, cooperative model. The most logical and strategic partner for Guyana is Caribbean Airlines (CAL). A strategic joint venture, with Guyana holding a minority stake, would create a powerful regional airline that leverages the strengths of both nations. CAL is already the state-owned flag carrier of Trinidad and Tobago (approximately 84% ownership) and Jamaica (approximately 16% ownership), demonstrating a successful precedent for multi-state cooperation [10]. It is the largest airline in the Caribbean, with an existing fleet of Boeing 737 MAX 8 and ATR 72-600 aircraft, established maintenance and training systems, and extensive regional and international route networks, including regular service to Guyana [10].

This partnership would be symbiotic. Guyana offers significant capital from its oil revenues, a rapidly growing and underserved market, a strategic geographic location that could serve as a new hub, and the loyalty of a large, travel-hungry diaspora. Caribbean Airlines brings an existing, modern fleet, established regulatory approvals (including with the US FAA), deep regional expertise, crew training systems, and the cost efficiencies that come from scale [10]. A joint venture would avoid the immense start-up costs and risks associated with creating an airline from scratch. It would allow a new Guyanese carrier to launch with a modern fleet, experienced crews, and an established safety record, while sharing maintenance, procurement, and scheduling costs. This model of cooperative sovereignty, proven by SAS, would allow Guyana to gain the strategic benefits of a national carrier without bearing the full financial burden or repeating the costly mistakes of the past.

Route Strategy: Start Small, Think Smart

The route strategy for a new Guyana Airways, in partnership with Caribbean Airlines, should be phased, disciplined, and commercially driven. The initial focus must be on the most profitable and high-demand routes, building a solid foundation before considering more ambitious, long-haul expansion. The approach should be to start small and think smart, avoiding the overreach that doomed its predecessor.

Phase I (0–3 years) should concentrate on the core North American diaspora markets. This includes high-frequency services to New York, Toronto, and Miami, which are home to the largest Guyanese communities. These routes are proven revenue generators and are currently served by foreign carriers, indicating a ready market. A strong service to Port of Spain would be essential to connect with the Caribbean Airlines hub and provide seamless onward connectivity throughout the Caribbean. This initial phase would establish the airline’s brand, reliability, and financial footing.

Phase II (3–7 years) could then explore strategic expansion. A direct service to London would be a major prize, but it should be approached cautiously, perhaps through a wet-lease arrangement or a codeshare partnership to mitigate risk. A limited-frequency service to a West African hub like Accra or Lagos could be explored, leveraging Georgetown’s geographic position to create a new South America-Africa air bridge, a strategy successfully employed by Turkish Airlines in connecting secondary markets. This phase would also involve strengthening intra-Caribbean links, positioning Guyana as a true regional hub.

Governance: The Make-or-Break Issue

The single most critical factor in the success or failure of a new national airline will be its governance. The ghost of the old Guyana Airways, haunted by political interference and mismanagement, serves as a stark reminder that a flag carrier cannot function as a political tool. To succeed, Guyana Airways 2.0 must be established from day one with an ironclad governance structure that prioritizes commercial discipline and operational independence. This means creating an independent board with proven expertise in aviation, finance, and international business, including representation from the diaspora community. This board, not politicians, must be empowered to make strategic decisions. There must be transparent performance metrics publicly reported annually, covering everything from on-time performance and financial results to customer satisfaction and safety records. Critically, there must be no political micromanagement in the airline’s day-to-day operations. The government’s role should be that of a strategic shareholder, not a day-to-day manager.

Financing and Risk Management

A new national airline must be built on a sound and sustainable financial model. The initial funding should come from sovereign seed capital derived from oil revenues, but this exposure must be capped to protect the national treasury. The goal should be to attract private co-investment to share the risk and bring additional commercial expertise to the table. The financial plan must include diversified revenue streams, with a strong focus on cargo revenue from the outset. To manage the inherent volatility of the airline industry, a disciplined fuel hedging strategy is non-negotiable. This was a key failing of Norwegian Air and a crucial lesson for any new entrant. Finally, the partnership agreement must include clear exit clauses for all parties, ensuring a defined, orderly process if the venture fails to meet its financial or strategic objectives. This is not a project to be entered into with blind optimism, but with a clear-eyed understanding of the risks and a robust framework to manage them.

National Benefits Beyond Flights

The strategic value of a national airline extends far beyond simply transporting passengers. A well-run, reliable flag carrier would serve as a catalyst for broad-based national development. It would support diversification of the tourism sector by providing reliable, direct access for international visitors. For Guyanese families, it would mean reduced travel costs and more reliable connections to the diaspora, strengthening familial and cultural ties. The airline would enhance medical and educational mobility, enabling Guyanese citizens to more easily access specialized healthcare and educational opportunities abroad. It would create skilled jobs not just for pilots and cabin crew, but in aviation maintenance, logistics, cargo management, and corporate administration. Finally, a national carrier would be a powerful tool of regional diplomacy, strengthening Guyana’s ties with its Caribbean and South American neighbors and projecting its growing influence on the world stage.

What Success Would Actually Look Like

The success of a new Guyana Airways should not be measured by the rhetoric of “national pride.” True success will be reflected in cold, hard metrics that demonstrate its value and sustainability. Success will be on-time performance that rivals the best in the region. It will be financial sustainability, operating as a profitable or break-even enterprise without the need for continuous government bailouts. It will be regional integration, measured by the number of seamless connections it provides to Caribbean and South American destinations. And most importantly, it will be measured by its strategic relevance to Guyana’s overall development plan, as reflected in its contribution to tourism growth, trade expansion, and the strengthening of the non-oil economy.

 A Flag Carrier for a Post-Oil Future

Guyana has a rare and rapidly closing window of opportunity. The nation’s newfound oil wealth provides the capital to think strategically about long-term infrastructure, but this wealth will not last forever. The choice is not whether to act, but how intelligently. The models for success—and the cautionary tales of failure—are clear. The hub-and-spoke strategy of Turkish Airlines shows how to build a global network from a non-traditional base. The cooperative model of SAS demonstrates the power of partnership for small nations, while the collapse of Norwegian Air’s long-haul ambitions warns against the dangers of debt-fueled overreach. The failure of the original Guyana Airways provides a painful but necessary reminder of the perils of political interference and poor governance.

A new national airline, reimagined as a strategic joint venture with an established partner like Caribbean Airlines, offers the most prudent and promising path forward. It is a model built on humility, partnership, and discipline. By starting small, focusing on core markets, and insulating the airline from political micromanagement, Guyana can build a flag carrier that is not a drain on the treasury but a powerful engine of economic growth and a symbol of its emergence as a confident, connected, and forward-looking nation.

Reimagining Guyana Airways: From Global Ambition to National Architecture

In examining what Guyana can learn from Turkish Airlines and the Nordic aviation model, the central argument was never about emulation for its own sake. It was about understanding how serious aviation systems are built: patiently, coherently, and from the inside out. The defining insight from Turkish Airlines was not branding or fleet expansion, but network logic—the disciplined use of feeder routes, hub consolidation, and sustained attention to commercial viability. From the Nordic experience, the lesson was governance rather than scale: small states succeeding in aviation not through spectacle, but through coordination, realism, and institutional restraint.

Yet there is a deeper lesson that must now be made explicit, because it sits closer to home. Any attempt to reimagine a Guyanese national carrier that privileges international routes while treating internal air mobility as secondary is not merely incomplete; it is structurally flawed. Aviation systems do not succeed by leaping outward. They succeed by being fed inward.

Guyana’s aviation conversation has long oscillated between nostalgia and aspiration—between memories of Guyana Airways’ long-haul reach and visions of a future flag carrier connecting Georgetown to global hubs. What has been persistently underexamined is the internal network that once made both possible. Guyana Airways, for all its later excesses, emerged at a moment when domestic and regional connectivity were understood as national infrastructure. Interior routes were not marginal add-ons; they were instruments of state presence, economic circulation, and national cohesion. When the airline collapsed, that internal architecture was never fully reconstructed. What followed was not a coordinated replacement, but a fragmented ecology of private operators filling essential gaps with limited policy alignment.

That ecology, however, has proven more resilient and more adaptive than is often acknowledged.

Recent developments in domestic aviation suggest that Guyana may be entering a quiet but consequential reset. The decision by Trans Guyana Airways to reduce hinterland airfares following runway rehabilitation is not simply a welcome consumer-facing adjustment. It is evident that public investment in aviation infrastructure is finally translating into operational efficiencies that reach passengers. This shift matters because it reveals a fundamental truth: hinterland aviation in Guyana is not inherently uneconomic. It is cost-sensitive. When runway conditions improve, when maintenance risks decline, and when operating environments stabilize, fares can fall without subsidy.

More importantly, this development shows that domestic operators respond rationally to infrastructure signals. That responsiveness is precisely what policymakers should want. It indicates the presence of a functioning internal air market—one in which pricing, capacity, and routes adjust in response to conditions rather than political decree. This is not a failure of state vision. It is an asset waiting to be integrated into a coherent national strategy.

The persistent policy mistake has been to frame hinterland air travel primarily as a social service—essential for medical evacuations, public servants, and emergency access, but peripheral to economic planning. This framing understates its true role. Internal air routes are trade corridors. They move miners, engineers, teachers, nurses, tourists, agricultural inputs, and time-sensitive goods. They connect oil-era Georgetown to non-oil Guyana. They allow capital, skills, and opportunity to circulate across geography that roads alone cannot yet bridge. In this sense, internal aviation belongs alongside ports, bridges, and energy transmission as economic infrastructure. Its reliability and affordability determine whether growth remains spatially concentrated or becomes nationally shared.

This is where the Nordic lesson, properly understood, becomes most relevant. Nordic aviation systems endure not only because of state ownership, but also because domestic routes feed regional hubs, which in turn feed international gateways. The logic is cumulative and structural. The same must be true in Guyana. International connectivity without domestic feed produces thin routes, volatile revenues, and inevitable political disappointment. No amount of long-haul ambition can compensate for the absence of a strong internal network.

Crucially, this does not require nationalizing domestic carriers or displacing existing operators. It requires coordination. It requires policy recognition that interior routes are feeders, not competitors, and that domestic aviation must be aligned with international schedules, infrastructure standards, and long-term planning. Without that alignment, international aviation becomes an enclave—serving expatriates, elites, and foreign capital—while the interior remains structurally disconnected from global opportunity.

The correct response to recent developments in domestic aviation is therefore not to romanticize a return to the Guyana Airways of old, nor to crowd out operators who have sustained internal connectivity through difficult years. It is to integrate internal air travel into national transport and economic planning with the seriousness it deserves. Hinterland airstrips must be treated as strategic assets. Operators must be given regulatory predictability. Fleet modernization should be supported through financing mechanisms rather than ad hoc intervention. Most importantly, domestic aviation data must inform national development planning in the same way that port throughput, energy capacity, and road networks do.

A country that cannot move itself efficiently within its own borders cannot fully leverage global connectivity, no matter how many wide-body aircraft land at Cheddi Jagan International Airport. Internal mobility is not an accessory to international ambition; it is its prerequisite.

The recent reduction in hinterland airfares should therefore be read not as a minor news item, but as a signal. Internal aviation in Guyana is responsive, adaptive, and capable of supporting a broader national strategy. The task now is to elevate it—from operational necessity to strategic pillar. Only then can the reimagining of Guyana’s aviation future move beyond aspiration and nostalgia toward architecture that is commercially viable, nationally inclusive, and durable over time.

References

[1] International Monetary Fund. (2025, May 7). IMF Executive Board Concludes 2025 Article IV Consultation with Guyana. Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2025/05/07/pr-25132-guyana-imf-executive-board-concludes-2025-article-iv-consultation

[2] Department of Public Information, Guyana. (2025, August 4). Guyana’s air traffic, connectivity on the rise. Retrieved from https://dpi.gov.gy/guyanas-air-traffic-connectivity-on-the-rise/

[3] Turkish Airlines. (2025, December 2). Turkish Airlines announced its strategic plan for the next 10 years. Retrieved from https://www.turkishairlines.com/ar-ae/press-room/news-press-release/turkish-airlines-announced-its-strategic-plan-for-the-next-10-years/

[4] Patel, P. (2025, September 23). Turkish Airlines: Leveraging Istanbul’s Mega-Hub for Global Connectivity. Simple Flying. Retrieved from https://simpleflying.com/how-istanbuls-new-airport-is-transforming-turkish-airlines/

[5] Wikipedia. (n.d.). Scandinavian Airlines. Retrieved December 27, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines

[6] Frost, N. (2022, July 21). Why Norwegian Air is failing. Quartz. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1688156/why-is-norwegian-air-failing

[7] Reuters. (2021, May 26). Norwegian Air, saved from collapse, reinvents as regional carrier. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/norwegian-air-saved-collapse-reinvents-regional-carrier-2021-05-26/

[8] Wikipedia. (n.d.). Guyana Airways. Retrieved December 27, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana_Airways

[9] Staff Reporter. (2012, November 17). A history of airline failure. Guyana Chronicle. Retrieved from https://guyanachronicle.com/2012/11/17/a-history-of-airline-failure/

[10] Wikipedia. (n.d.). Caribbean Airlines. Retrieved December 27, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_Airlines

Editor’s Note

Guyana’s extraordinary economic transformation has reignited long-standing debates about national infrastructure, sovereignty, and development priorities. Few issues capture these tensions as clearly as aviation. The idea of a national airline evokes powerful memories and emotions—but sentiment alone cannot substitute for strategy.

This policy brief is published to reframe that conversation. Rather than asking whether Guyana should revive a flag carrier in the traditional sense, it asks a more consequential question: what aviation architecture best serves Guyana’s long-term national interest in an oil-to-post-oil transition? Drawing on comparative lessons from global and regional aviation models, the brief approaches air connectivity as strategic infrastructure—no different in principle from ports, energy systems, or digital networks.

Guyana Business Journal presents this analysis not as an endorsement of any single institutional arrangement, but as a contribution to serious policy thinking. The emphasis on governance, commercial discipline, and regional partnership reflects a deliberate effort to move beyond nostalgia and toward evidence-based decision-making. History—both Guyana’s own and that of other small states—demonstrates that aviation succeeds or fails not on pride, but on institutional design.

We offer this brief to policymakers, business leaders, members of the diaspora, and the wider public as an invitation to engage thoughtfully with a complex challenge. The stakes are high, the window of opportunity is finite, and the costs of repeating past mistakes would be substantial. Our hope is that this piece advances a more mature, forward-looking national discussion—one grounded in realism, cooperation, and long-term value creation.

— Guyana Business Journal

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Jan 07, 2025

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This commentary is offered in the spirit that has guided Guyana Business Journal’s coverage of the Adrianna Younge case from the outset: restraint over rhetoric, evidence over assertion, and institutional accountability over performative certainty. Recent public commentary on the case has moved sharply in the opposite direction, and that turn deserves a firm response.

What is most striking is the ease with which unresolved questions have been converted into settled facts. Assertions about the cause of death are presented as conclusive even as the public record remains incomplete. This collapse of uncertainty into certainty is not a harmless rhetorical move. In a society already struggling with trust in public institutions, it substitutes confidence for proof and forecloses the very transparency that journalism ought to demand.

Equally troubling is the moral inversion that follows. Once conclusions are declared, blame is reassigned downward—onto grieving parents, relatives, and ordinary citizens—judged against imagined standards of how trauma “should” be navigated. This is hindsight masquerading as common sense. Grief is not procedural, shock is not rational, and families in crisis are not obliged to perform textbook responses to satisfy commentators. When public discourse shifts from scrutinizing institutions to chastising victims, it is a profound ethical failure.

Throughout its reporting, Guyana Business Journal has maintained a simple but often inconvenient principle: the burden of clarity rests with institutions, not with the powerless. The critical questions in the Adrianna Younge case have always been institutional ones.

Were protocols followed?

Was the scene secured properly?

Were communications timely, consistent, and credible?

Were investigative findings disclosed fully and without delay?

When these questions remain inadequately answered, public anger is not evidence of degeneracy; it is a predictable response to opacity.

There has also been a persistent effort in public commentary to reframe the issue as one of political hypocrisy, suggesting that scrutiny itself is a partisan excess. This framing is evasive. Accountability is not a competition between camps, nor is it invalidated by who raises the question. Demanding transparency from the state is not opportunism; it is a civic obligation, especially when the matter involves the death of a child.

The degradation of language accompanying this shift is perhaps the clearest warning sign. Dehumanizing descriptions of protestors and citizens, casually deployed and proudly unrepentant, do not explain violence or defend order. They harden divisions, license contempt, and diminish the moral authority of the speaker. Condemning attacks on civilians and public property is necessary and right. Doing so while stripping fellow citizens of dignity is neither necessary nor defensible.

What emerges from this moment is not clarity about the Adrianna Younge case, but a cautionary lesson about commentary itself. When certainty replaces inquiry, when grief is met with scorn, and when institutions are shielded by redirecting blame toward families and communities, journalism ceases to serve the public interest. It becomes noise.

Guyana Business Journal has not claimed omniscience in this case, nor has it rushed to tidy conclusions. That restraint is deliberate. Truth in matters of public trust is not produced by declaration; it is earned through disclosure, process, and accountability. In moments of national pain, the test of journalism is not how loudly it pronounces judgment, but how faithfully it insists on evidence, humanity, and institutional responsibility. On that standard, much of the recent commentary falls short.

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Editor’s Note

This commentary reflects Guyana Business Journal’s continuing commitment to careful, evidence-based public discourse in moments of national trauma. It is written not to inflame, personalize, or politicize the tragic death of Adrianna Younge, but to defend core journalistic principles: restraint, humanity, and institutional accountability. GBJ does not presume conclusions where investigations remain contested, nor does it assign moral blame to grieving families or communities. Our position remains consistent—public trust is earned through transparency, process, and disclosure, and commentary that substitutes certainty for evidence risks deepening division rather than advancing truth.

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Jan 04, 2025

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Rome, Italy-Rome’s rise was not inevitable. Between 264 and 146 BCE, the Roman Republic fought three wars against Carthage that nearly destroyed it. These were not border skirmishes or dynastic quarrels, but existential conflicts—prolonged, asymmetric, and ruinously expensive. Carthage was Rome’s superior in nearly every measurable way: wealthier, more technologically sophisticated, commercially dominant across the Mediterranean, and led by generals of legendary skill. Hannibal Barca’s campaign in Italy remains one of history’s most audacious military feats. For fifteen years, he ravaged the Italian peninsula, destroyed Roman armies with chilling regularity, and pushed Rome’s alliance system to the brink of collapse.

Yet Rome won. Not because it avoided a crisis, but because its institutions survived it.

Victory did not come from brilliance alone. It came from institutional endurance, relentless adaptation, and a willingness to absorb catastrophic loss without collapse. After the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE—where Hannibal annihilated roughly 50,000 Roman soldiers in a single afternoon—Rome did not seek peace. It did not fracture. It rebuilt. And it kept rebuilding until Carthage was exhausted. The lesson is stark: endurance is not a matter of national temperament or collective optimism. It is an institutional achievement. Nations survive great challenges not through charisma or confidence, but through frameworks that continue to function when everything else fails.

Hannibal won battles.

Rome won the war.

The distinction matters. Carthage placed its faith in tactical genius—in the singular brilliance of commanders capable of outthinking and outmaneuvering their enemies. Rome placed its faith in something far less glamorous: institutional continuity. The Republic did not depend on any one leader. When consuls fell in battle, new ones were elected. When armies were destroyed, new legions were raised. When strategies failed, they were revised. Shock after shock was absorbed, not because Romans were braver or more intelligent, but because the Republic prioritized the survival of institutions over the preservation of individual reputations.

For oil-era Guyana, the lesson is uncomfortable but urgent. Tactical wins—impressive GDP growth figures, new infrastructure projects, favorable trade deals—are not meaningless, but they are insufficient.

If governance depends on the political skill of individual leaders, the continuity of a particular administration, or the temporary alignment of interests, then the system is brittle. Under sustained pressure, it will break. What Guyana needs is what Rome built: institutions that endure beyond election cycles, beyond personalities, beyond the inevitable turbulence of politics. Oil wealth creates opportunity but also strain. It accelerates political competition, magnifies corruption risks, and exposes every weak joint in the machinery of governance. Only institutions can bear that kind of sustained pressure.

Rome understood something else as well: memory is strategy. The Republic did not mythologize invincibility; it institutionalized humility. The defeat at Cannae mattered for centuries. Roman politicians invoked it. Roman generals studied it. Roman parents used it to teach their children about the costs of complacency. Memory was not treated as trauma to be suppressed, but as strategic intelligence to be preserved. Rome’s culture of remembrance—of defeats, betrayals, and near-collapses—informed its restraint, preparedness, and policy choices long after the immediate crisis had passed.

Guyana carries difficult but indispensable memories: a history of extraction masquerading as development, ethnic division elevated into political currency, democratic institutions that eroded gradually before collapsing, and long years in which scarcity reshaped both governance and civic expectations. These are not comfortable recollections, but they are essential ones. National memory is not nostalgia or grievance; it is strategic awareness. A society that forgets how it nearly failed will not recognize the early signs of failure when they return in new forms. Oil-era Guyana must therefore resist the temptation to treat its past as irrelevant—something eclipsed by discovery, neutralized by growth, or redeemed by revenue. The past is not obsolete; it is diagnostic. The ethnic tensions that shaped post-independence politics have not vanished; prosperity can mute and exacerbate them, but it cannot resolve them. The institutional weaknesses that once enabled authoritarian rule were never fully repaired, only rendered less visible during periods of relative stability, and we see today how easily they can reassert themselves. Success does not eliminate vulnerability. It transforms it—shifting risk from scarcity to capture, from stagnation to overconfidence, from neglect to centralization. Memory is the only safeguard against mistaking prosperity for permanence.

Rome’s greatest challenge, however, came after Carthage was defeated. The wars made Rome the dominant power in the Mediterranean. Wealth poured into the Republic. New territories brought new resources, markets, and opportunities. They also brought new problems. Expansion deepened inequality. Land ownership concentrated in fewer hands. Veterans returned to find their farms seized by creditors. Political competition intensified as the stakes grew higher. We note that the question of land and its equitable distribution continues to dominate the Guyanese discourse. The institutions that had won the war struggled to govern responsibly in the peace. Within a century, the Republic collapsed into civil war and gave way to an empire.

This is oil-era Guyana’s most urgent warning: the greatest risk lies not in discovery, but in mismanaging success. Oil wealth can destabilize politics faster than poverty ever did. It creates powerful incentives for patronage, corruption, and short-term thinking. It rewards those who capture the state apparatus quickly, before someone else does. Governance becomes a zero-sum competition for control over resource revenues. Countries with weak institutions—where the rule of law is fragile, civil service is politicized, and judicial independence is nominal—rarely handle sudden wealth well. The temptation to treat oil revenues as political capital rather than national patrimony is overwhelming. Rome’s experience suggests that winning is easier than governing what comes after. Guyana has won the lottery. The most challenging test lies ahead.

Rome never existed in isolation. Neighbors, trade routes, and rival powers shaped its fortunes. External pressures required constant diplomatic and military vigilance. Even after Carthage was destroyed, Rome faced threats from Macedon and the Seleucid Empire, as well as internal rebellions in Gaul and Hispania. Geopolitics did not pause because Rome became powerful; it intensified. Guyana’s oil era unfolds in a similarly contested regional environment. Venezuela’s political instability, economic collapse, and increasingly assertive territorial rhetoric are not abstractions. They are live variables in Guyana’s strategic calculus. Energy wealth does not reduce geopolitical attention; it heightens it. Resources attract interest. Weakness invites pressure. Power without legitimacy is fragile—a lesson Rome learned well.

This is not alarmism. It is realism. Guyana must invest seriously in diplomacy, regional alliances, and international law—not as reactions to crises, but as permanent national strategies. Dependence on goodwill or institutional inertia is insufficient. What is needed are durable frameworks: treaty commitments, multilateral partnerships, and legal mechanisms that anchor sovereignty and territorial integrity within international norms.

Rome’s endurance ultimately rested on legal frameworks, civic norms, elite education, and disciplined governance embedded within civilian institutions. These survived the Republic, the Empire, and even Rome’s collapse, persisting in altered forms across Europe and beyond. Roman law shaped medieval jurisprudence, Renaissance statecraft, Enlightenment political theory, and modern constitutionalism. The institution outlasted the state. For Guyana, this clarifies where oil revenues should flow: judicial independence, a professional and depoliticized civil service, education as civic formation, and long-term planning agencies insulated from political pressure. These are not glamorous investments. They do not generate applause. But they are the infrastructure of resilience.

Education, in particular, is the quiet weapon. Rome trained citizens to think in terms of obligation, service, and continuity. Education was civic, not merely vocational. Romans studied rhetoric to participate in governance, history to cultivate moral judgment, and law as the architecture of collective life. For Guyana, this is especially urgent in a resource-driven economy. Oil does not require a broadly educated population to generate revenue. It requires a narrow technical elite. The danger is that education becomes purely instrumental—training workers for the oil sector rather than citizens capable of self-governance. A society that can extract wealth but cannot govern itself is, by definition, unstable.

Education must therefore form judgment. It must cultivate the capacity to weigh competing interests, think beyond immediate gain, and understand governance as stewardship rather than extraction. This is not idealism; it is practicality. A population unable to think critically about power, wealth, and responsibility is easily manipulated. Rome understood that citizenship was learned. Guyana should remember that lesson.

Rome’s story ultimately poses a single question: can a society govern abundance with the same discipline it once used to survive scarcity? The Punic Wars remind us that survival demands discipline, but success demands more—restraint, foresight, institutional integrity, and a willingness to privilege the long view over immediate reward. Rome struggled with this. Most societies do.

Guyana now faces its own version of the test. Oil will challenge the country. Geopolitics will test it. History suggests the decisive moment will come after success, not before it. The question is whether Guyana’s institutions can bear the weight of wealth, whether its leaders can resist the temptations of patronage and short-term gain, and whether its citizens can hold the system accountable when it falters.

Rome teaches Guyana that patience matters more than speed, institutions matter more than personalities, and memory matters more than optimism. Oil is an opportunity, but it is also a stress test. What Guyana builds now—in law, governance, education, and civic culture—will determine whether oil becomes a foundation for long-term prosperity or a catalyst for instability. Rome built institutions that outlasted the empire. Guyana has the chance to do the same. History offers no guarantees, but it offers warnings. Guyana should listen.

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Editor’s Note

Letters from… is an ongoing reflective series written from places where history is not abstract but built into streets, institutions, and everyday life. Each piece uses travel as a vantage point—an opportunity to think carefully about governance, memory, and national choice by observing how other societies have confronted moments of rupture, recovery, and reinvention.

Berlin, Istanbul, and Rome are not presented as models to be copied. They are treated as conversations across time and geography. Berlin invites reflection on division, memory, and the long work of institutional repair. Istanbul reveals how continuity is layered, contested, and preserved across empires and political transformations. Rome, approached here through the lens of the Punic Wars, raises a quieter but no less urgent question: how societies govern success after survival has been secured.

Read together, these letters are not about comparison for its own sake, nor about importing foreign solutions. They are an exercise in perspective—using distance to clarify what is often hardest to see at home. For Guyana, navigating a moment of profound economic change, such a perspective is not a luxury. It is a form of civic discipline.

These essays are offered in that spirit: reflective rather than declarative, comparative rather than prescriptive, grounded in history but oriented toward the future.

If our work has sharpened your thinking, challenged your assumptions, or provided a space for serious engagement with the forces reshaping our country, we ask you to support it. Independence is not free. The work of approximating truth, holding power accountable, and imagining what Guyana might yet become requires resources and resolve.

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The Guyana Business Journal Editorial Board welcomes reflections and submissions at terrence.blackman@guyanabusinessjournal.com.

 

 

 

Jan 02, 2025

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Istanbul, Turkey-Final Investment Decisions (FIDs) are the oil and gas industry’s most explicit declaration of intent. They mark the moment when uncertainty gives way to commitment, when years of geological appraisal, engineering design, regulatory negotiation, and financial modeling crystallize into a decision to deploy capital at scale. In 2025, a review of major global FIDs reveals not only where companies are investing, but how the architecture of global energy production is quietly being reordered.

When these projects are examined through a single lens—investment size—a striking reality emerges. Guyana now sits at the very top of global upstream capital allocation.

The largest FID among the projects highlighted by Offshore-Energy.biz is the Hammerhead Development offshore Guyana, sanctioned by ExxonMobil at an estimated US$6.8 billion. This deepwater oil project, the seventh approved development in the Stabroek Block, eclipses comparable investments in long-established producing regions. That fact alone marks a historic shift. Less than a decade after its first oil discoveries, Guyana has moved from a frontier basin to the centerpiece of global upstream strategy.

Hammerhead’s scale places it ahead of BP’s Tiber–Guadalupe project in the Gulf of America, a deepwater development estimated at roughly US$5 billion. That project, significant in its own right, reflects continued confidence in the Gulf as a technologically mature and commercially reliable basin. Yet the ordering matters: capital that once flowed almost automatically to legacy provinces is now being diverted to newer, higher-quality discoveries with strong production economics.

Below these two giants lies a second tier of projects clustered in the US$1–2 billion range, revealing a different strategic logic. Chevron’s Gorgon Stage 3 project in Australia, at approximately US$2 billion, underscores the enduring role of gas—particularly LNG-linked gas—as a stabilizing pillar in global energy markets. Rather than greenfield expansion, the investment focuses on subsea tie-backs that maximize existing infrastructure, reflecting a disciplined approach to capital deployment.

A similar philosophy appears in Norway’s North Sea. ConocoPhillips’ redevelopment of Previously Produced Fields, at around US$1.3 billion, and Equinor’s Johan Sverdrup Phase 3, at roughly US$1.29 billion, both emphasize extending field life, improving recovery rates, and extracting additional value from mature assets. These are not bets on exploration risk, but on engineering efficiency, reservoir management, and regulatory stability.

Further down the scale, the Sea Lion project in the North Falkland Basin—estimated between US$1.8 and US$2.1 billion—stands out as a reminder that frontier exploration has not disappeared. However, such projects now proceed cautiously, often in phased developments designed to secure early cash flow and limit exposure to geopolitical and cost overruns.

At the lower end of disclosed investments are projects like Shell’s Kaikias waterflood in the Gulf of Mexico, where capital spending is comparatively modest and focused on enhanced recovery rather than new production platforms. These initiatives reflect a broader industry trend: when margins are thinner, innovation shifts from expansion to optimization.

Taken together, this ordering tells a coherent story about the contemporary oil and gas sector. Deepwater oil still attracts the most significant capital commitments. Gas remains strategically essential where it can be integrated into global LNG systems. Mature basins continue to command investment, but increasingly through redevelopment rather than expansion. And most notably, new producers with exceptional geology and competitive costs—chief among them Guyana—are reshaping the hierarchy of global energy investment.

For Guyana, topping this list is both an affirmation and a challenge. The scale of capital being committed offshore signals confidence not only in the reservoirs themselves, but in the country’s contractual framework, project execution record, and geopolitical positioning. Yet history offers ample warnings: large inflows of resource capital can accelerate development, but they can also magnify fiscal volatility, institutional strain, and governance risk if not managed with discipline.

Being first in line for global upstream investment is not an endpoint. It is a test of policy coherence, long-term planning, and the capacity to convert exceptional resource wealth into durable national prosperity.

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Editor’s Note

As Guyana stands at the threshold of a transformative decade, we remain committed to rigorous, independent analysis that honors the intelligence of our readers. We do not traffic in easy answers or comfortable narratives. Instead, we ask difficult questions, examine inconvenient data, and insist that a nation’s future deserves more than cheerleading—it demands clear-eyed assessment.

If our work has sharpened your thinking, challenged your assumptions, or provided a space for serious engagement with the forces reshaping our country, we ask you to support it. Independence is not free. The work of approximating truth, holding power accountable, and imagining what Guyana might yet become requires resources and resolve.

📢 Please support the Guyana Business Journal & Magazine today

The Guyana Business Journal Editorial Board welcomes reflections and submissions at terrence.blackman@guyanabusinessjournal.com.