‘We can’t eat a new road’: Guyanese voice fears over true cost of Exxon’s oil bonanza

Multibillion-dollar deal promising to lift country out of poverty may be false dawn with dire impact on climate, warn campaigners

Annette Arjoon is not anti-oil. The marine conservationist calls the vast new oilfields off Guyana's coast a blessing" that will earn billions of dollars for one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean, even as she recognises that pulling yet more fossil fuel from the ground will deepen the climate crisis.

But Arjoon does have a problem with who is drilling the oil. She has seen firsthand what happens when the US's largest petroleum company descends on a small country bearing the promise of riches.