Guardrails Before the First Barrel, Dr Holness

There are moments in the life of a small state when the earth itself seems to whisper temptation.

Jamaica may now be approaching one.

Somewhere beneath our marine estate, beyond the reach of casual sight but not of determined exploration, there may lie oil—commercially meaningful oil. Enough, perhaps, to alter our balance sheets, to excite investors, to animate Cabinet briefings, and to awaken that most dangerous of national instincts: the belief that salvation has finally arrived.

Let us be clear from the outset.

This is not salvation.

It is a test.

And history is merciless to those who fail it.

Already, the early signs of intellectual slippage are visible. One hears it in the casual assertion that oil will make Jamaica rich—as though geology, by itself, were a development policy. One hears it in the impatient dismissal of environmental and legal concerns, as though climate realities were optional inconveniences rather than binding constraints. One hears it, too, in the quiet resignation of those who assume that, should oil come, it will merely deepen the familiar grooves of privilege and exclusion.

Each of these instincts is understandable.

All of them, if left unchecked, are dangerous.

For oil is not a gift. It is an amplifier. It magnifies whatever already exists within a nation’s institutional core. Where governance is disciplined, it can stabilise and strengthen. Where governance is weak—or worse, performative—it corrodes, concentrates, and distorts.

Jamaica must ask itself, without flinching: which of these are we?

We are, at present, a country that builds impressive hardware—roads, hotels, hospitals—while too often neglecting the software that must govern their use. We have grown accustomed to celebrating execution while quietly tolerating opacity. We have seen, more than once, how proximity to power can become a substitute for accountability.

And now, we are invited to believe that the sudden arrival of oil will somehow refine these habits.

It will not.

If anything, it will expose them.

This is why the present moment demands a level of seriousness that our public discourse has not yet reached. We are still arguing at the level of sentiment—hope, fear, ideology—when the real issue is design.

Who will control this resource?

Under what rules?

With what safeguards?

And to whose benefit?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are structural ones. And they cannot be answered by press conferences or personality.

This is not a time for any “hero person”. Jamaica has suffered enough from the seduction of singular authority—those moments when complexity is reduced to charisma and national interest is entrusted to individual discretion. Oil, if it comes, will not forgive that approach.

What is required instead is an architecture—deliberately constructed, transparently governed, and fiercely insulated from capture.

A multidisciplinary enterprise, not a political fiefdom.

Economists to structure revenue flows. Engineers to interrogate technical feasibility. Environmental scientists to define and enforce ecological limits. Legal experts to navigate an increasingly litigious global climate regime. Public finance specialists to ensure that what is earned is neither hidden nor hastily consumed.

And above all, a governance framework that recognises a simple but uncomfortable truth: the greatest risk to Jamaica’s oil future will not lie offshore. It will lie within.

Let us also dispense with a convenient illusion. Jamaica is already a participant in the global fossil fuel system—only as a price-taker. We import, we consume, we pay. The question is not whether oil is pure or impure. The question is whether, if it is found within our domain, we can manage it with the discipline that has eluded so many others.

The record, globally, is not encouraging.

Oil has financed transformation—but it has also financed decay. It has built sovereign wealth funds—and it has built oligarchies. It has stabilised economies—and it has hollowed them out.

The difference has never been the resource.

It has always been the rules.

Yet even as we contemplate potential gain, we must reckon with emerging constraint. The climate regime is tightening. Legal accountability is no longer theoretical. Small island states, uniquely vulnerable, must be especially cautious lest short-term extraction invite long-term liability.

To ignore this is not boldness. It is negligence.

But neither is retreat a strategy. Exploration, conducted responsibly, is knowledge. And knowledge is power—if, and only if, it is matched by restraint.

The real danger is not that Jamaica will choose wrongly between oil and no oil.

It is that we will choose quickly, loudly, and without the discipline to sustain the consequences.

We have seen this pattern before. The rush. The announcements. The quieting of dissent. The narrowing of benefit. The widening of distrust.

Oil will not correct this pattern.

It will accelerate it.

Unless we intervene—deliberately, structurally, and early.

Guardrails are not decorative. They are protective. They exist precisely because human systems, left to impulse and incentive, tend toward excess.

Jamaica does not yet have those guardrails in place.

Until we do, the only responsible posture is preparation—not celebration.

Before the first barrel, there must be rules.

Before the revenue, restraint.

Before the promise, proof of discipline.

Anything less is not development.

It is temptation—poorly managed.

And small states, Andrew, rarely survive that lesson twice.