Suriname, Guyana and Brazil are attracting more new investments than the Gulf of Mexico and other more established oil fields. And they are helping to keep global oil prices relatively low, undermining efforts by Russia and its allies in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, such as Saudi Arabia, to manage global supply and raise prices.
In Guyana, oil companies have found more than 10 billion barrels of probable offshore oil and gas reserves, according to IHS Markit, an energy consulting firm. Production started in 2019 and is increasing rapidly. Guyana already accounts for one of the 50 largest oil basins in the world, according to consultants.
Suriname has reserves of at least three billion to four billion barrels, energy experts said, or even half of the new oil and gas discovered worldwide last year.
But exploiting these reserves in a way that benefits its people can be a challenge for Suriname, a former Dutch colony that has been politically volatile and governed for much of the past 40 years by Desire Bouterse, a former army sergeant who took over power in one stroke. In 1999, a Dutch court convicted Bouterse for drug trafficking. In 2019, a Suriname court convicted him of the murders of 15 political opponents in 1982 and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. He lost an election and retired last year, but was not arrested.
The new president, Chan Santokhi, former police chief and justice minister, faces many challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic and a fiscal crisis. The unemployment rate last year was 11.2% and inflation is extremely high; the IMF expects consumer prices to increase by almost 50 percent this year.
Business and Economy
The exploitation of oil and natural gas could easily lift the country of some 600,000 people, roughly the population of Milwaukee, out of poverty if the Santokhi government takes the right measures. But history is replete with examples of countries that have failed to properly manage mineral and energy wealth, a phenomenon that economists call the “resource curse”.