Guyana, the Kuwait of the Caribbean, Outshines the Loser Lands — Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela

Georgetown, Guyana, a normally laid-back Caribbean port of sandy streets and British colonial gingerbread architecture, is suffering this week from executive jet gridlock. Among the notables jetting into South America’s smallest capital are: Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, the United Arab Emirates’ industry minister, the president of Exxon Mobil Upstream, and the chairman of Chevron. Riding an American-directed oil boom, Guyana recently displaced Brunei as the world’s largest oil producer per capita. This year, for the fifth year in a row, Guyana, population 950,000, is to again record the world’s highest economic growth rate, forecast around 20 percent. With international hotel chains building 2,000 hotel rooms at Georgetown, investors tout this once backwater as “the next Dubai.”Guyana is a little-noticed beneficiary of President Trump’s capture last month of the president of neighboring Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. Mr. Maduro had cut Venezuela’s oil production by two-thirds, then turned his attention to Guyana. Last year, he threatened to seize two-thirds of the nation, a region known as the Essequibo. With Mr. Maduro in jail at New York City, oil industry analysts say a lot of risk has been lifted from Guyana and its offshore oil projects. This year, Guyana is to produce 1 million barrels of oil per day, eight times the level of five years ago and matching that of Venezuela.President Nicolás Maduro at a press conference on September 1, 2025 at Caracas, Venezuela. Jesus Vargas/Getty ImagesIn the Trump era of gunboat diplomacy, Guyana illustrates the advantages of playing ball with America and with Western investors. Poverty plagues Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, three Caribbean nations that took a radically different route of nationalism, socialism, and dictatorship. While millions of people emigrate from these nations, Guyana attracts migrants. Many are Guyanese who left the country during its socialist phase, between 1970 and 1985.Cubans vote with their feet, migrating to Guyana to work on building projects such as the 11-story Hilton Georgetown. Last year, 135,000 Cubans had work permits in Guyana, up from 800 five years earlier.In socialist Venezuela, American oil companies went through two nationalizations in 50 years. Today, they are lukewarm to Mr. Trump’s appeal for $100 billion in investment to revive oil production.In Guyana, by contrast, a consortium led by Exxon has invested $60 billion over the last five years. Looking ahead, Exxon’s investment plans call for doubling the nation’s oil production over the next five years. For now, the Exxon consortium is the only oil producer in Guyana. Discovered by Exxon five years ago, the nation’s reserves are estimated at 11 billion barrels of oil.A woman holds a sign of the Venezuelan map with the Essequibo territory included during the closing campaign on Venezuela Referendum on dispute territory with Guyana at Caracas. AP/Matias DelacroixMoving to natural gas, Exxon plans to bring on later this year a $1 billion gas line from its offshore producing blocks. This is to fuel a new 300-megawatt power plant near Georgetown. Unlike Havana, Caracas, and Managua, Guyana’s capital is to be spared electricity blackouts. A second pipeline is in the works to fuel a petrochemical complex, liquefied natural gas plant, and deepwater port — all planned for eastern Guyana, near Suriname.In what may be another sign of pax Americana in the region, Suriname agreed this week to create a joint team to explore natural gas production projects with Guyana, Reuters reported Tuesday from Georgetown. In a dispute similar to Venezuela’s, Suriname has a 6,000 square mile land claim on Guyana.“When the government advances permitting approvals and market frameworks, we will advance engineering, execution, and investment in lockstep,” the president of Exxon Mobil Upstream, Dan Ammann, said yesterday at the now-annual Guyana Energy Conference at the new 200-room Guyana Marriott. “We are ready and we will match the pace of our partners.”Guyana’s flag. Chris Jackson – pool/Getty ImagesWith foreign energy executives packing the Marriott ballroom, Guyana’s president, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, made pitches for Guyana’s new stock exchange and for construction of a 165-megawatt hydroelectric project at Amaila Falls, 160-miles south of Georgetown. This nearly $1 billion project alone could meet all of Guyana’s current power needs. With the new power, Guyana’s president also wants to revive an energy-intensive industry that was abandoned to the jungle during the nation’s socialist years — smelters that turned bauxite into aluminium.At the conference, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, promised to join Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and build an embassy on land allotted at Georgetown. Easing relations with Gulf oil producers, Mr. Ali is the only Muslim head of state in the Americas.Advocating the Saudi model of downstream energy development and diversification, the foreign minister noted that the Saudi Fund for Development has loaned Guyana $100 million for the construction of 2,500 houses and $50 million for the construction of a key river bridge on the road south to Brazil.The bridge is part of a transformative tourism and infrastructure drive pushed by Mr. Ali, a former minister of tourism. His government has built major training centers for work in the hospitality and petroleum sectors. The oil wealth has allowed the government to reinstate a lost perk from the socialist era — free university education.In Guyana’s multiparty democracy, Mr. Ali won re-election last September. His campaign was boosted in part by completion of a 1.6-mile, $260 million cable-stayed bridge that crosses a river bisecting the capital. This bridge and the Saudi-financed one are projects of China Railway Construction Corporation.To bind together a nation larger than Britain and to promote eco tourism to the “English-speaking Amazon,” Guyana is embarking on a project to build or rebuild 35 airports and airstrips and about 300 road bridges. Believing that American tourists will want to explore a country that is 85 percent rain forest, the government is building two new international airports, one in the Amazon and one near Suriname, and a 150,000-square-foot arrivals terminal at Georgetown’s Cheddi Jagan International Airport. This “mega airport” is to have a capacity of 2.5 million people, almost triple last year’s volume of passengers. At this level, Georgetown’s airport would be the fifth-busiest in the Caribbean. Already, Georgetown has direct flights from Houston, New York, Miami, and Toronto. By contrast, Caracas and Havana no longer have flights from Canada or the United States.

Guyana, the Kuwait of the Caribbean, Outshines the Loser Lands — Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela

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