🇬🇾 Guyana

Guyana is experiencing the most dramatic economic transformation of any country on earth right now. This South American nation of just 800,000 people had a modest $7 billion GDP before ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil reserves in 2015. Production has ramped up to over 600,000 barrels per day, and GDP has more than tripled. Guyana is now projected to have the highest GDP per capita in the Western Hemisphere within a decade. The country is culturally Caribbean despite being on the South American mainland, with a population split between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese. The interior is 80% pristine rainforest, largely roadless.

Oil has completely reshaped the economy — the Stabroek Block alone holds an estimated 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil. ExxonMobil, Hess, and CNOOC are the operators. Before oil, sugar, gold, bauxite, and rice were the main exports. The government has established a Natural Resource Fund to manage oil revenues. The challenge is avoiding the resource curse — Guyana's institutions are small and the governance capacity to manage billions in new revenue is untested. GDP growth hit 62% in 2022 — the highest in the world by far.

Guyana's Kaieteur Falls is five times the height of Niagara Falls and has the world's largest single-drop waterfall by volume — yet it gets fewer than 10,000 visitors per year due to its remote location. The country is one of only two English-speaking countries in South America (the other is its neighbor, Suriname). Jonestown, the site of the 1978 mass murder-suicide of 918 Americans, is in Guyana.

Guyana's oil boom is either the greatest opportunity or the greatest risk in the Western Hemisphere. If managed well, it could become the Norway of the Caribbean. If not, it'll be another cautionary tale. The jury is very much out.