GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Former United States secretary of state, Michael ‘Mike’ Pompeo, has praised Guyana’s economic transformation which he said is as a result of the country’s petroleum industry.
Addressing the Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo, Pompeo said the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country is well positioned to achieve massive wealth and opportunity.
“On my most recent trip to Guyana, a couple of weeks back, I saw a country that is well-positioned to realise its promise of incredible prosperity and opportunity,” Pompeo said in a virtual address to the event that ends on Thursday and being held under the theme “‘Fuelling Transformation and Modernisation”..
“It’s a nation full of wonderful people, people who work hard, natural resources that are nearly unrivalled, and a government led by President (Irfaan] Ali, determined to build infrastructure that will improve the lives of all its citizens,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo said that energy security is not solely an economic issue but is integrated into every country’s national security, which is crucial to prosperity and economic freedom.
He urged stakeholders including policymakers, the private sector, and investors to ensure Guyana has the necessary tools that will propel Guyana to achieve its full potential as a massive producer of energy.
“It’s of paramount importance. It’s why I feel America should do what it can to advocate for and help defend Guyana’s sovereignty and its freedom,” the former secretary of state said.
Meanwhile, former Colombian president, Ivan Duque, says Guyana offers a multitude of environmentally sound investment opportunities in the oil and gas industry, as well as in the environmental sector.
“Every dollar that is invested in Guyana, a country that has 85 per cent of its territory in tropical forests and jungle and non-deforestation is also contributing effectively. So that policy was adopted by this country a long time ago and it has been enhanced and re-insured by President Ali and his administration,” Duque said.
He said that Guyana can issue biodiversity bonds to get long-term financing for strategic projects and connect the work of corporations in helping to conserve the species.
“And that can connect that zero deforestation with a voluntary carbon credit market is also going to be a promised land for the next chapter of green financing globally, which will be the biodiversity credits that are hyper-connected with deforestation of nature and species. And this will also be a mechanism to elevate the access to finance through biodiversity bonds,”he said.
Duque said with this objective Guyana will be able to exchange those policies in a monetisable way to effectively achieve biodiversity credit.
It is expected that, by the year 2030, the biodiversity credit market will surpass GUY$50 billion (One Guyana dollar=US$0.004 cents) and Duque made reference to the country’s low carbon development strategy (LCDS) 2030 that focuses on the production of electricity in the country, moving from using heavy oil to natural gases and transitional fuel, and also connecting to renewables like water, solar and wind.
“A dollar investment in Guyana is a greener dollar investment in other parts of the hemisphere. When you look at all these complimentary opportunities and ideas that are part of that low carbon development strategy,” the former Colombian president said.
