Suriname could be last big oil discovery as industry cuts costs



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Suriname, Guyana and Brazil now attract more new investment than the Gulf of Mexico and other more established oil fields. And they help keep world oil prices relatively low, undermining efforts by Russia and its allies in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, like Saudi Arabia, to manage global supply and push up. the prices.

In Guyana, oil companies have discovered more than 10 billion barrels of probable oil and gas reserves accessible at sea, according to IHS Markit, the energy consultancy firm. Production started in 2019 and is growing rapidly. Guyana is already among the 50 largest oil basins in the world, according to consultants.

Suriname has at least three to four billion barrels of reserves, energy experts say, up to half of the new oil and gas discovered in the world last year.

But exploiting these reserves in a way that benefits its people could prove to be a challenge for Suriname, a politically unstable former Dutch colony and ruled for much of the past 40 years by Desire Bouterse, a former army sergeant. who took power in a coup. . In 1999, a Dutch court convicted Mr Bouterse of drug trafficking. In 2019, a Suriname court found him guilty 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 sent to jail.

The new president, Chan Santokhi, former police chief and minister of justice, faces many challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic and a budget crisis. The unemployment rate last year was 11.2% and inflation is extremely high; the IMF expects consumer prices to rise nearly 50 percent this year.

Oil and gas exploration could easily lift the country of about 600,000, or the people of Milwaukee, out of poverty if Mr. Santokhi’s administration takes the right steps. But history is replete with examples of countries that have failed to properly manage energy and mineral resources, a phenomenon economists call the “resource curse.”

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