Tiny Guyana could soon become one of the world’s giant oil exporters

You have probably heard of the resource curse, when a country is overwhelmed by a windfall from selling commodities. The tiny state of Guyana, on the north-east corner of the Amazon, is about to become one of the most extreme cases of recent times.In 2015, 11bn barrels of proven oil reserves were discovered off its coast, with a present value of over half a trillion dollars. A country with 800,000 people, roughly as many as the English city of Nottingham, would become the . Production is rising and could reach 1.2m barrels a day by 2028, or 1.1% of global supply. If so, Guyana will soon produce more oil per person than any country in the world.