The finding of a "significant" amount of oil in off-shore wells places the former Dutch colony in the footsteps of neighboring Guyana.

The intuition has proved to be correct and the prospections carried out under Suriname's territorial waters, together with the successful hydrocarbon reserves being exploited in Guyana's maritime limits, have found abundant oil. The finding can be a decisive boost for the development of what is, precisely after Guyana, the second poorest country in South America, but it can also be the occasion, as it happens with its neighbor, to accentuate an economic and political corruption that has been hindering the progress of the population.

▲ Suriname's presidential palace in the country's capital, Paramaribo [Ian Mackenzie].

article / Álvaro de Lecea

So far this year, drilling in two 'off-shore' fields in Suriname has been positive result , confirming the "significant" existence of oil in block 58, operated by France's Total, in partnership with US-based Apache. Everything indicates that the same success could be obtained in block 52, operated by the also American ExxonMobil and the Malaysian Petronas, which were pioneers in prospecting in Surinamese waters with operations since 2016.

Both blocks are adjacent to the fields being exploited under the waters of neighboring Guyana, where for the moment it is estimated that there are some 3.2 billion barrels of extractable oil. In the case of Suriname, the prospections carried out in the first viable field, Maka Central-1, discovered in January 2020, speak of 300 million barrels, but the estimates from Sapakara West-1, discovered in April, and subsequent programmed prospections have yet to be added. It is considered that some 15 billion barrels of oil reserves may exist in the Guyana-Suriname basin.

Until this new oil era in the Guianas (the former English and Dutch Guianas; the French Guianas remains an overseas dependency of France), Suriname was considered to have reserves of 99 million barrels, which at the current rate of exploitation left two decades to deplete. In 2016, the country produced just 16,400 barrels per day.

status political, economic and social

With just under 600,000 inhabitants, Suriname is the least populated country in South America. Its Economics depends largely on the export of metals and minerals, especially bauxite. The fall in commodity prices since 2014 particularly affected the country's accounts. In 2015, there was a GDP contraction of 3.4% and 5.6% in 2016. Although the evolution then became positive again, the IMF forecasts for this 2020, in the wake of the global crisis due to Covid-19, a 4.9% drop in GDP.

Since gaining independence in 1975 from the Netherlands, its weak democracy has suffered three coups d'état. Two of them were led by the same person: Desi Bouterse, the country's president until this July. Bouterse staged a coup in 1980 and remained at the helm of power indirectly until 1988. During those years, he kept Suriname under a dictatorship. In 1990 he staged another coup d'état, although this time he resigned the presidency. He was accused of the 1982 murder of 15 political opponents, in a long judicial process that finally ended in December 2019 with a twenty-year prison sentence and is now appealed by Bouterse. He has also been convicted of drug trafficking in the Netherlands, for which the resulting international arrest warrant prevents him from leaving Suriname. His son Dino has also been convicted of drug and arms trafficking and is imprisoned in the United States. Bouterse's Suriname has come to be presented as the paradigm of the mafia state.

In 2010 Desi Bouterse won the elections as candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP); in 2015 he was re-elected for another five years. In the elections last May 25, despite some controversial measures to limit the options of the civil service examination, he lost to Chan Santokhi, leader of the Progressive Reform Party (VHP). He tried to delay the counting and validation of votes alleging the health emergency of the coronavirus, but finally at the end of June the new National Assembly was constituted and it should appoint the new president of the country during July.

Total's operations in Suriname and Guyana waters [Total].

Relationship with Venezuela

Suriname intends to take advantage of this prospect of an oil bonanza to strengthen Staatsolie, the state-owned oil company. In January, before the widespread crisis over Covid-19, it announced purpose to expand its presence in the bond market in 2020 and also, conditions permitting, to list its shares in London or New York. This would serve to raise up to $2 billion to finance the national oil company's exploration campaign in the coming years.

On the other hand, Venezuela's territorial claims against Guyana, which affect the Essequibo -the western half of the former British colony- and which are being studied by the International Court of Justice, include part of the maritime space in which Guyana is extracting oil, but do not affect Suriname, whose delimitations are outside the scope of this old dispute.

Venezuela and Suriname have maintained special relations during Chavismo and while Desi Bouterse has been in power. Occasionally, a certain connection has been pointed out between drug trafficking under the protection of Chavista authorities and that attributed to Bouterse. The offer made by his son to Hezbollah to have training camps in Suriname, a matter for which he was arrested in 2015 in Panama at the request of the United States and tried in New York, can be understood in light of the relationship maintained by Chavism and Hezbollah, to whose operatives Caracas has provided passports to facilitate their movements. Suriname has supported Venezuela in regional forums at times of international pressure against the regime of Nicolás Maduro. In addition, the country has been increasingly strengthening its relations with Russia and China, from which in December 2019 it obtained the commitment of a new credit .

With the political change of the last elections, in principle Maduro's Venezuela loses a close ally, while it may gain an oil competitor (at least as long as Venezuelan oil exploitation remains at a minimum).