Q&A: Guyana's minister tasked with oil boom and forest protection

NEW YORK - Guyana, a country of just 800,000 people, would not expect to hit the headlines during New York's annual U.N. General Assembly and parallel events of the city's climate week.

But Guyana's new-found oil wealth has pushed the small South American country into the spotlight.

One of the world's fastest-growing economies, it has earned some $7.5 billion in revenue from oil sales and royalties since ExxonMobil started pumping offshore oil in late 2019.

Yet it has also been at the forefront of global efforts to protect nature, boasting 18 million hectares of rich forest that cover 87% of the country, according to research by carbon credit standards body Architecture for REDD+ Transactions.

As Guyana's minister for natural resources, Vickram Bharrat has a rare job managing both the country's oil boom and protecting the environment.

Context sat down with the minister in New York to find out how he, and the country, balances those priorities.

More so than ever, your country is in the spotlight globally. What message do you have for other world leaders in New York this week on nature?

Leaders and governments must find the correct balance. It is equally important to have environmental sustainability while you have economic development.

And I think that is the success of our country because we have seen tremendous growth.

Our people are benefiting. They're enjoying better jobs, high-paying jobs. There are more opportunities for the private sector while we have managed to maintain our high environmental credentials.

We are committed as a country to safeguarding our forests, which is our national asset, and we have done so for centuries.

The big challenge now for the world, and especially forested countries, is to show that the forest is worth more standing than cut.

What we've been doing in Guyana is moving towards more value-added. Rather than exporting round wood or logs, we prefer to export wood products. Instead of cutting 10 trees, you can cut five, and it's far more profitable than cutting the 10.

Your role is quite rare internationally: minister of natural resources from oil through to forests. How do you prioritise your time and your attention?

When you have one person managing that, there is some amount of synergy. I give equal time and equal effort to all sectors because I do manage the forests, I manage mining and I manage oil and gas.

Is that increasingly difficult, though, because of the kinds of money that the country is growing based on oil? I saw that there was a big investment decision made by Exxon yesterday.

Yeah, I signed the seventh oil development in the Stabroek Block of the Hammerhead project. That will see our production going to close to 1.5 million barrels per day by 2029.

But the amazing thing is that we will remain a carbon-neutral country. For example, I signed the Montreal agreement in 2022 to restore our biodiversity by 30% by 2030. It is about 9% now.

So while we have been signing projects in oil and gas, we have been doing equally important work on the environment side too, like the restoration, biodiversity, expansion of protected areas, titling of Amerindian communities. Our Indigenous people now have their land.

With deals like the one announced this week, how can you ensure environmental protections alongside that? And what are the potential benefits to community members from these oil deals?

We have a number of safeguards in our environmental department. For example, we don't allow flaring unless it is commissioning maintenance or there is some unexpected reason that you need to flare, then you pay the government a fee.

We have a cradle-to-grave waste management system tied into our environmental permit and Exxon is very much in tune with what we want to do and they're very much cooperating with us when it comes to environmental safeguards.

And the thing is that our crude can be considered what you call light sweet. So it is very easy to refine.

While are we engaged in oil exploration and production, we have what we call a Low Carbon Development Strategy 2030 which includes safeguarding the environment, especially our forest, and it includes our energy mix.

We have a pipeline coming in onshore. The power plant that will be operated by gas is 300 megawatts. And we're doing the second one, which is 600 megawatts. We're doing 50 solar, we're doing about over 100 hydro. So we too are engaged in transitioning at the same time.

Back onto the conservation, there's been some criticism from Indigenous groups about carbon credits and their involvement. What's your response?

It depends on who you hear it from, because some of these NGOs, because we're a small society, a lot of them are politically aligned.

I find that a very anti-Indigenous development because we are probably one of the only countries in the world that has set aside at least 15% of all money gained to go directly to Indigenous communities.

At least 15% of the $750 million will be over $100 million dollars that will be going to just over 200 small Indigenous communities.

How does it feel at this moment where it seems like there's a real impetus around COP 30 for countries in the Global South to shape new financial measures?

We could have cut down our forests and developed our countries so that we don't ask for anything. But we saved our forests, which is saving the world now. So it's more an entitlement rather than a handout.

Developing these financial mechanisms is critically important. We don't see one single method as the way forward. Whether it's the jurisdictional REDD+ (carbon credits), private sector investment, government allocation, the Tropical Forest Forever facility - any mechanism that works, we support.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

(Reporting by Jack Graham; Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Jonathan Hemming.)