It is not often that Guyana (population: 800,000; area: 83,000 square miles), the small English-speaking country perched on the South American continent, makes the pages of the Washington Post, but with the recent appointment of Rex Tillerson as the new US Secretary of State, there has been some specula-tion in the Post regarding his links to his former company, ExxonMobil, the company’s oil exploration in Guyanese waters, and his attitude to Venezuela.

In his presentation, Dr. Riyad Insanally, Ambassador of Guyana to the USA, will seek to address a few misconceptions arising in the media and put in per-spective the quest for oil and the prospects for economic transformation in Guyana, against the backdrop of the existential threats posed by Venezuela’s spurious claim to two-thirds of Guyana’s land territory and most of Guyana’s maritime space.