Jul 15, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – It amazes the lengths to which this government goes to deny important matters. When it is unable to deny, it deflects. However, when efforts at deflecting come to naught, it is time for minimisation to takeover. So, in the context of their great national oil patrimony, citizens hear a curious word, one intended to banish fears, to put them at ease. The word used by the government is “anomaly” and then “a slight anomaly” only. There is clear evidence of water bubbling directly above the ExxonMobil gas pipeline’s path, and citizens are left to contend with “a slight anomaly.” We are happy that the government did not think of insulting the people by releasing a statement confirming that the bubbling water in that gas pipeline area was the result of fish performing their versions of aquatic sports.

An anomaly is something out of the ordinary. So remote and irregular as to be nothing to worry about. To emphasise that it is much ado about nothing, two government agencies informed the public that it was not just an anomaly, and then only a slight one. So small and so meaningless as to mean nothing. When governments go to these lengths, with not one, but two state agencies delivering a very terse message, it is usually confirmation that there is something. Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, had a slip of the tongue. Only a slip, not a slide. At the inception, he denied and dismissed a report about a problem around the ExxonMobil gas pipeline. It was left to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Maritime Administration Department (MARAD) to rush out and try to plaster over that discrepancy. That move, delegation to two agencies, in itself was instructive.