Latest news with #MohamedIrfaanAli
Epoch Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Guyana Sets Election Date; Territorial Dispute With Venezuela Top of Agenda
Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali on May 25 announced the date for the next elections and said he would defend his country's territory amid the dispute with Caracas, Venezuela, over the Essequibo region. 'This evening, I announced General and Regional Elections in Guyana will be held on September 1, 2025,' the Guyanese president
India Gazette
6 days ago
- Politics
- India Gazette
Guyana affirms support against terrorism to All-Party Delegation led by Shashi Tharoor
Georgetown [Guyana], May 28 (ANI): The All-Party Indian Parliamentary Delegation led by Shashi Tharoor was conveyed of Guyana's support in India's fight against terrorism. Guyana's side appreciated India's unity displayed through the all-party visit there. In a post on X, the Embassy said, 'In a reception hosted by High Commissioner of India to Guyana, the Friends of India in Guyana conveyed a resounding message of unwavering support from the Indian community and diaspora in Guyana to their brothers and sisters in India that Guyana will stand with India in India's fight against terrorism.' 'They underlined their unequivocal support to India in India's policy of Zero Tolerance for Terrorism and appreciated India's unity and resolve across the entire political spectrum displayed by the visit of the All-Party Indian Parliamentary Delegation from India,' he added. The delegation also held talks with the President of Guyana, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who condemned terrorism and said that terrorism has no place in the civilised world. He also affirmed Guyana's support to India. 'Welcoming the All-Party Indian Parliamentary Delegation to the State House, H.E. Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali underscored that India-Guyana partnership not just about friendship and cordial relations it is about the bonds of blood shared over generations. He assured the Indian delegation Guyana's unwavering support in India's fight against terrorism and underlined that there is no place for terrorism and extremism in the civilized world and such actions deserve a befitting response,' he said. The delegation then held talks with Guyana's Foreign Minister, National Security Advisor, Chief of Defence Staff, Commissioner of Police and other senior delegates from Guyana's national security establishment and noted important areas of cooperation. 'Thereafter, the delegation interacted with a high-level delegation comprising Guyana's Foreign Minister Hon'ble Hugh Hilton Todd, National Security Advisor, Chief of Defence Staff, Commissioner of Police and other senior delegates from Guyana's national security establishment. Both sides noted with appreciation the recent initiatives in the field of security and defence cooperation and emphasized the need to further strengthen the ongoing engagement, especially after the historic visit of Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, to Guyana in November 2024,' the post stated. The delegation recognised his fight against colonialism that inspires many. The delegation visited the Promenade Garden in Guyana on Wednesday and paid floral tribute to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi. In a post on X, the Indian Embassy in Guyana said, 'The All-Party Indian Parliamentary Delegation visited the Promenade Garden and paid floral tribute to the statue of Father of the Nation- Mahatma Gandhi- recalling his lasting contribution to fight against colonial rule and oppression which that was an inspiration for many across the world. The delegation also interacted with Indian students studying at various Medical Universities in Guyana.' Following their visit to Guyana, the all-party delegation led by Shashi Tharoor is scheduled to visit Panama from May 27 to 29. (ANI)
India Gazette
26-05-2025
- Politics
- India Gazette
"We are protectors, not aggressors": President Mohamed Irfaan Ali vows to defend Guyana's sovereignty at 59th Independence Day celebration
Berbice [Guyana], May 26 (ANI): At the 59th Independence Day celebrations in Guyana, President Mohamed Irfaan Ali emphasised the nation's commitment to protect its sovereignty, asserting that Guyana is a protector, not an aggressor. At the event, Mohamed Irfaan Ali said, 'We are not aggressors. We are protectors, but let no one mistake our peacefulness for weakness. If our sovereignty is challenged, if our land is threatened, we shall rise as One Nation, One People, One destiny. We shall rise not in fear, but in fierce loyalty to the land that gave us birth, and which we love unconditionally.' He added, 'We shall defend this nation with every beat in our heart, with every muscle in our body. We will never surrender... Let this prosperity not present us as arrogant people but people bounded together with a strong sense of responsibility of what is required of us in the family of humanity.' The event also saw the participation of an all-party delegation led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. Following a meeting with Prime Minister Brigadier Mark Anthony Phillips (Retd.), Tharoor spoke about the larger scope of cooperation between the two nations. He highlighted the ongoing Technical Cooperation programme, which brings around 100 Guyanese officials to India each year for training. While speaking to ANI, Tharoor said, 'With Guyana, it always goes beyond the main purpose of our visit because there is a much larger scope of cooperation between our countries. The Prime Minister's wife had come to Ahmedabad as part of the Technical Cooperation programme we offer, in which about 100 officials every year from Guyana tend to come, and these officials are trained in India for 3-6 months, depending on the project. She had come and studied Entrepreneurial and NGO management...' Expressing his gratitude, Tharoor also acknowledged the hospitality extended by the Prime Minister, who hosted a dinner attended by several cabinet members. During the dinner, discussions included key issues like terrorism. He further said, 'I am extremely grateful for the warm welcome extended by the Prime Minister, who hosted us for dinner. Guyana's 59th Independence Day is coming up. We were very touched when the Prime Minister insisted we come for dinner. Many members of the cabinet were also present. We had some very good conversations. We mentioned the issues of terrorism.' The all-party delegation led by Tharoor comprises Shambhavi Chaudhary (Lok Janshakti Party), Sarfaraz Ahmed (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha), G M Harish Balayagi (Telugu Desam Party), Shashank Mani Tripathi, Tejaswi Surya, Bhubaneswar K Lata (all from BJP), Mallikarjun Devda (Shiv Sena) and Former Indian Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu. The members of the Indian community and the Indian diaspora in Guyana welcomed the all-party delegation with a resounding applause and enthusiasm. Hailing India's response against acts of terror perpetuated by Pakistan, the members of the Indian community expressed their heartfelt support. The all-party delegation aims to brief international partners on India's response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack and its broader fight against cross-border terrorism. Operation Sindoor was launched on May 7 as a decisive military response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack by Pak-sponsored terrorists in which 26 people were killed. Indian Armed Forces targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, leading to the death of over 100 terrorists affiliated with terror outfits like the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen. (ANI)
CNN
29-03-2025
- Business
- CNN
A tiny rainforest country is growing into a petrostate. A US oil company could reap the biggest rewards
Oil & gas South America InvestingFacebookTweetLink Follow Guyana's destiny changed in 2015. US fossil fuel giant Exxon discovered nearly 11 billion barrels of oil in the deep water off the coast of this tiny, rainforested country. It was one of the most spectacular oil discoveries of recent decades. By 2019, Exxon and its partners, US oil company Hess and China-headquartered CNOOC, had started producing the fossil fuel. They now pump around 650,000 barrels of oil a day, with plans to more than double this to 1.3 million by 2027. Guyana now has the world's highest expected oil production growth through 2035. This country — sandwiched between Brazil, Venezuela and Suriname — has been hailed as a climate champion for the lush, well-preserved forests that carpet nearly 90% of its land. It is on the path to becoming a petrostate at the same time as the impacts of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis escalate. While the government says environmental protection and an oil industry can go hand-in-hand, and low-income countries must be allowed to exploit their own resources, critics say it's a dangerous path in a warming world, and the benefits may ultimately skew toward Exxon — not Guyana. Since Exxon's transformative discovery, Guyana's government has tightly embraced oil as a route to prosperity. In December 2019, then-President David Granger said in a speech, 'petroleum resources will be utilized to provide the good life for all … Every Guyanese will benefit.' It's a narrative that has continued under current President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who says new oil wealth will allow Guyana to develop better infrastructure, healthcare and climate adaptation. Oil's economic impact has already been enormous. The country of around 820,000 people is now the world's fastest expanding economy. Its GDP grew more than 33% in 2023 and more than 40% in 2024. Critics, however, accuse the country of squandering its climate leadership by throwing its lot in with fossil fuels, especially given Guyana's huge vulnerability to climate change. Sea level rise could claim its capital Georgetown by 2030, according to one assessment. 'You have a government that is reckless about what is going to happen to Guyana,' said Melinda Janki, an international lawyer in Guyana who is handling several lawsuits against Exxon. It's pursuing 'a supposed course of development that is actually backward and destructive,' she told CNN. And while plenty of Guyanese people welcome the new oil industry, some say Guyana's startling economic statistics do not reflect a real-world prosperity for ordinary people, many of whom are struggling with the higher prices accompanying the oil boom. Inflation rose 6.6% in 2023, with prices of some foods shooting up much more rapidly. 'Since the oil extraction began in Guyana, we have noticed that our cost of living has gone sky high,' said Wintress White, of Red Thread, a non-profit that focuses on improving living conditions for Guyanese women. 'The money is not trickling down to the masses,' she told CNN. CNN contacted President Ali, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Finance for comment but received no response. Guyana, a former Dutch then British colony which gained independence in 1966, is one of only a handful of countries that is a 'carbon sink,' meaning it stores more planet-heating pollution than it produces. This is due to its vast rainforest; trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. The country has protected its biodiversity where others have destroyed theirs, President Ali said in a BBC interview last year. In 2009, the country signed an agreement with Norway, which promised Guyana more than $250 million to preserve its 18.5 million hectares, or nearly 46 million acres, of forests. Ali insists the country can balance climate leadership and fossil fuel exploitation. The new oil wealth will allow Guayana to develop, including building climate adaptations such as sea walls, he has said. He has also pointed to the continued failures of wealthy countries, already grown rich on their own fossil fuels, to help poorer countries with climate finance. But there are concerns Guyana could fall victim to the 'resource curse,' in which vast, new wealth can actually make life worse for those who live there. 'That foreign money and that sudden rush of opportunities, combined with very limited manpower and government capacities, does often result in a lot of corruption,' said Michael Ross, a political science professor at UCLA. Ross pointed to Guyana's neighbor Venezuela, where a large oil windfall led to a dramatic decline in government accountability and an increase in authoritarianism. The oil has also upped tensions between the two countries, with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro laying claim to the oil-rich Essequibo region of Guyana. Newly wealthy countries also find themselves suddenly interacting with foreign companies 'whose own infrastructure and access to information just dwarfs anything that's happening in the country,' Ross said. Critics say this power imbalance is clear in the 2016 contract Guyana signed with Exxon. Under the agreement, Exxon keeps 75% of everything it makes from its oil operations in Guyana, with the remaining 25% shared equally between the company and the government, which also takes a 2% royalty. 'It was a bad deal,' Ali said in the BBC interview, but he has rejected the idea of unilaterally changing the agreement, which was signed by the previous government. He says the next contract with Exxon will be on different terms. An Exxon spokesperson said the contract is 'globally competitive for countries at a similar stage of exploration' and said Guyana is averaging $1 billion a year in 'oil profits.' Exxon has also faced a number of lawsuits over its potential environmental impact, many filed by Melinda Janki, a Guyanese international lawyer, who drafted the country's Environmental Protection Act back in the 1990s. A big victory for Guyana's people and environment came in 2023, when the court ruled Exxon should have unlimited liability for the costs of any oil spill. Exxon has since appealed the ruling and has posted a $2 billion guarantee while it awaits the appeal outcome. Exxon said this commitment supplements 'its robust balance sheets … and the insurance policies they already had in place.' Janki says this isn't enough. Offshore oil spills can be extremely expensive to deal with, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill cost nearly $70 billion to clean up. The push and pull between those who say oil offers Guyana a brighter future and those who fear the industry's impact will continue. Exxon said it's had a positive impact on the country, including employing more than 6,200 people, investing more than $2 billion with local Guyanese businesses since 2015 and spending more than $43 million on community projects. But Red Thread's Wintress White says people are struggling with sky-high rents and food prices that have doubled or tripled in some cases. 'The reality here is that the oil is not a blessing, it's a curse and it's only polluting our environment,' she said. Janki believes Guyana can move swiftly to renewables. It is a country of sunshine, wind and rivers for small-scale hydropower she said. She fears the country's rush for oil has come much too late and will trap the country into an industry without a long future. 'It's too late to do oil … the only people who are going to make money from this are Exxon and the oil companies,' she said.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A tiny rainforest country is growing into a petrostate. A US oil company could reap the biggest rewards
Guyana's destiny changed in 2015. US fossil fuel giant Exxon discovered nearly 11 billion barrels of oil in the deep water off the coast of this tiny, rainforested country. It was one of the most spectacular oil discoveries of recent decades. By 2019, Exxon and its partners, US oil company Hess and China-headquartered CNOOC, had started producing the fossil fuel. They now pump around 650,000 barrels of oil a day, with plans to more than double this to 1.3 million by 2027. Guyana now has the world's highest expected oil production growth through 2035. This country — sandwiched between Brazil, Venezuela and Suriname — has been hailed as a climate champion for the lush, well-preserved forests that carpet nearly 90% of its land. It is on the path to becoming a petrostate at the same time as the impacts of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis escalate. While the government says environmental protection and an oil industry can go hand-in-hand, and low-income countries must be allowed to exploit their own resources, critics say it's a dangerous path in a warming world, and the benefits may ultimately skew toward Exxon — not Guyana. Since Exxon's transformative discovery, Guyana's government has tightly embraced oil as a route to prosperity. In December 2019, then-President David Granger said in a speech, 'petroleum resources will be utilized to provide the good life for all … Every Guyanese will benefit.' It's a narrative that has continued under current President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who says new oil wealth will allow Guyana to develop better infrastructure, healthcare and climate adaptation. Oil's economic impact has already been enormous. The country of around 820,000 people is now the world's fastest expanding economy. Its GDP grew more than 33% in 2023 and more than 40% in 2024. Critics, however, accuse the country of squandering its climate leadership by throwing its lot in with fossil fuels, especially given Guyana's huge vulnerability to climate change. Sea level rise could claim its capital Georgetown by 2030, according to one assessment. 'You have a government that is reckless about what is going to happen to Guyana,' said Melinda Janki, an international lawyer in Guyana who is handling several lawsuits against Exxon. It's pursuing 'a supposed course of development that is actually backward and destructive,' she told CNN. And while plenty of Guyanese people welcome the new oil industry, some say Guyana's startling economic statistics do not reflect a real-world prosperity for ordinary people, many of whom are struggling with the higher prices accompanying the oil boom. Inflation rose 6.6% in 2023, with prices of some foods shooting up much more rapidly. 'Since the oil extraction began in Guyana, we have noticed that our cost of living has gone sky high,' said Wintress White, of Red Thread, a non-profit that focuses on improving living conditions for Guyanese women. 'The money is not trickling down to the masses,' she told CNN. CNN contacted President Ali, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Finance for comment but received no response. Guyana, a former Dutch then British colony which gained independence in 1966, is one of only a handful of countries that is a 'carbon sink,' meaning it stores more planet-heating pollution than it produces. This is due to its vast rainforest; trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. The country has protected its biodiversity where others have destroyed theirs, President Ali said in a BBC interview last year. In 2009, the country signed an agreement with Norway, which promised Guyana more than $250 million to preserve its 18.5 million hectares, or nearly 46 million acres, of forests. Ali insists the country can balance climate leadership and fossil fuel exploitation. The new oil wealth will allow Guayana to develop, including building climate adaptations such as sea walls, he has said. He has also pointed to the continued failures of wealthy countries, already grown rich on their own fossil fuels, to help poorer countries with climate finance. But there are concerns Guyana could fall victim to the 'resource curse,' in which vast, new wealth can actually make life worse for those who live there. 'That foreign money and that sudden rush of opportunities, combined with very limited manpower and government capacities, does often result in a lot of corruption,' said Michael Ross, a political science professor at UCLA. Ross pointed to Guyana's neighbor Venezuela, where a large oil windfall led to a dramatic decline in government accountability and an increase in authoritarianism. The oil has also upped tensions between the two countries, with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro laying claim to the oil-rich Essequibo region of Guyana. Newly wealthy countries also find themselves suddenly interacting with foreign companies 'whose own infrastructure and access to information just dwarfs anything that's happening in the country,' Ross said. Critics say this power imbalance is clear in the 2016 contract Guyana signed with Exxon. Under the agreement, Exxon keeps 75% of everything it makes from its oil operations in Guyana, with the remaining 25% shared equally between the company and the government, which also takes a 2% royalty. 'It was a bad deal,' Ali said in the BBC interview, but he has rejected the idea of unilaterally changing the agreement, which was signed by the previous government. He says the next contract with Exxon will be on different terms. An Exxon spokesperson said the contract is 'globally competitive for countries at a similar stage of exploration' and said Guyana is averaging $1 billion a year in 'oil profits.' Exxon has also faced a number of lawsuits over its potential environmental impact, many filed by Melinda Janki, a Guyanese international lawyer, who drafted the country's Environmental Protection Act back in the 1990s. A big victory for Guyana's people and environment came in 2023, when the court ruled Exxon should have unlimited liability for the costs of any oil spill. Exxon has since appealed the ruling and has posted a $2 billion guarantee while it awaits the appeal outcome. Exxon said this commitment supplements 'its robust balance sheets … and the insurance policies they already had in place.' Janki says this isn't enough. Offshore oil spills can be extremely expensive to deal with, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill cost nearly $70 billion to clean up. The push and pull between those who say oil offers Guyana a brighter future and those who fear the industry's impact will continue. Exxon said it's had a positive impact on the country, including employing more than 6,200 people, investing more than $2 billion with local Guyanese businesses since 2015 and spending more than $43 million on community projects. But Red Thread's Wintress White says people are struggling with sky-high rents and food prices that have doubled or tripled in some cases. 'The reality here is that the oil is not a blessing, it's a curse and it's only polluting our environment,' she said. Janki believes Guyana can move swiftly to renewables. It is a country of sunshine, wind and rivers for small-scale hydropower she said. She fears the country's rush for oil has come much too late and will trap the country into an industry without a long future. 'It's too late to do oil … the only people who are going to make money from this are Exxon and the oil companies,' she said.
