Guyana, a country of roughly one million people perched on the northeastern corner of South America, is one of the world’s fastest growing economies thanks to a super-charged nation-building project: the accelerated development of gigantic offshore oil fields.
In just six years, one of the continent’s poorest nations has emerged as the world’s newest petrostate. The discovery, though, has enraged Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro and revived his government’s claims to Guyanese territory in a century-old boundary dispute.
These issues of nation-building and sovereignty are familiar to Canadians, so I wanted to talk with a wise Guyanese colleague about their moment, as we contemplate ours.
Selwin Asafa George, a 52-year-old entrepreneur, is remarkably thoughtful about what it’s going to take for Guyana to embrace this movement towards prosperity, without losing its soul in the process. While the catalyst for accelerating nation-building in our respective countries differs, there is something for Canadians in Guyana’s journey.
“This is our moment in the sun,” Selwin readily acknowledges when we virtually connect.
Guyanese by birth, Selwin worked as an investment banker in New York City, studied at New York University and then Harvard’s Kennedy School of Public Policy, before returning to Guyana in 2005 to take care of the family business. A mid-size enterprise employing over 150 locals, W&T George and Company holds several franchises in the food services and hospitality sector, and owns a portfolio of commercial real estate in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, as well as prime land outside the capital.
“There have been locals suggesting we leave the oil in the ground,” Selwin shares, with a smirk. “And there have been very influential locals who have at least said to slow the rate at which we are extracting the oil, to give use a better chance, a better deal, to give us time.”
Familiar sentiments to an Albertan like me. In Canada, I explain, First Nations remain divided on the merits of some of the nation-building projects pitched by provincial premiers, including, for example, the mining of critical minerals in northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire.
And despite the obvious need to become less reliant on a single market for Canada’s oil — America — the green lobby is unrelenting in its push against the construction of export pipelines to tidewater. In the last decade, I tell Selwin, advocacy campaigns have sucked the energy out of many projects.
It’s different in Guyana, Selwin reports: “Where you have strong economic interests, that will prevail.” Between Exxon and Chevron, American companies “now control the majority of Guyana’s oil output … so it’s heavily in the interest of the U.S. to protect their economic interests.”
(Exxon, operator and owner of 45 per cent of Guyana’s Stabroek block, forecasts its output there to nearly double to 1.3 million bpd by the end of 2027. And Chevron now owns 30 per cent of the block.)
There’s no denying Canada is economically tied to America’s hip, yet this conversation with Selwin is a reminder of the choices Canada retains.
Foreign companies do invest in Canada’s extractive sectors, but domestic ownership remains strong and influential. And while Canadians are struggling to define First Nations treaty rights within Confederation, we don’t have another nation actually challenging our sovereignty. Venezuela is actively disputing Guyana’s control over the Essequibo region, territory that makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s landmass and includes oil and other resources.
Selwin has thought deeply about the issues that bubble in nation-building endeavours and he’s savvy enough to know what’s negotiable. Right now, he’s especially focused on one question: Who benefits from Guyana’s resource windfall?
After the first significant oil discovery in offshore Guyana was made by ExxonMobil, Selwin argued his country should adopt something similar to the Alaska sovereign wealth fund model.
“I believe it is critical that the public remains vigilant,” Selwin wrote then in a Guyanese newspaper, “and so I urge that we go the path of Alaska by adopting a model of dividends for all. The introduction of the Alaska model of paying dividends to every Alaskan from their oil and gas resources would work wonders to strengthen the good governance model and ensure an engaged populace.”
Who benefits? It’s a critical question that can stimulate public awareness and buy-in — and one Canadians could spend more time talking about.
How many Canadians know oilsands projects contribute roughly 3 per cent of our country’s total GDP? How many Canadians understand the mechanics of equalization payments, how wealth is transferred from have to have-not provinces to ensure non-renewable resource bounty is shared?
Ultimately, a sovereign wealth fund was created in Guyana but, Selwin reports, the funds have largely been squandered. He did the math at the end of 2024, to see what the outcome could have been if the government of Guyana had heeded his advice. (He’s a former investment banker, so his calculations are credible.) The fund would likely have grown to roughly $1.5 billion, he estimates, the equivalent of US$50,000 to $60,000 for every Guyanese citizen, and would continue to grow quickly, he adds.
Selwin is encouraging leaders in Guyana to focus not just on the building of physical infrastructure, but on the building of a culture of productivity in the country as well.
What’s that, I ask. “That’s culture where it’s not just about the pay,” he says, it’s culture that “respects the dignity of being productive.”
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