Dear Editor:
When you read that someone Guyanese born occupies a prominent position in a big company, this grabs your attention and makes you full of pride at the achievement of one of your fellow nationals. Newton Liu, a Guyanese born of Chinese background is a leading authority on resin-coated-proppant technology, an expertise in demand by oil-drilling companies.
Liu lives in Texas working for the largest engineering company that mines for products to enhance oil and gas drilling. He heads the research department. Liu has offered his services for oil drilling in Guyana.
Liu was born and raised in Georgetown attending Central High. He received his Masters’ degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Ottawa. He started out his career as a Development Engineer at the Research Lab of the bauxite-aluminum plant in Linden in 1983. After only seven years working at the bauxite plant and at the height of the depression-driven exodus out of Guyana in 1990, Liu reluctantly emigrated to Canada. For the next 18 years, he has racked up a resumé of wide-ranging work experience in mining companies – from managing sand mines and processing operations to product quality control, to supervising research labs, to streamlining and trouble-shooting production operations. Then he decided to move to the US for a more lucrative position.
Today, he is the International Product Service Manager for Santrol, and is respected for his expertise in the manufacture of resin-coated proppants used in oil/gas drilling and extraction operations. Resin-coated proppants are coated sand or ceramic grains which when pumped with fracturing fluid down the well-bore and through perforations in the casing thousands of feet below the ground or ocean bed create fractures in oil/gas-bearing rocks. This process is called hydraulic fracturing. The proppants keep the newly created fractures open and provide a highly porous path for oil or gas to seep into a direct path to the well-bore resulting in increased production. Liu’s job is to test for quality control and for size, specific gravity, resin content and resin curability on sand or ceramic grains.
Santrol produces these proppants and sells them by the thousands of tons to major oil-field operators like Halliburton, BJ Service and Schlumberger.
Liu travels a lot around the globe to test for these proppants. When he is away from his office-cum-lab in South Houston, he is in China performing product service management duties at a resin-coating proppant plant owned and operated jointly by Fairmount Minerals and a privately-owned Chinese proppant company.
He is now in charge of joint operations with a Chinese investor group, manufacturing resin-coated proppants in China.
Liu said he is willing to share his experience and expertise with the Guyana government in oil-drilling operations but he does not know if there will be any offers.
“With or without a contract, I am always at the service of the government and people of my native country,” he said. He added Sam Hinds knew him personally having worked together at Linden. The government should take up his offer.
Vishnu Bisram
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Dear Editor:
I would like to continue the discussion on the dismal state of No 63 beach. The reason why the beach and the surrounding environment is so dirty is simply because of lack of a positive development plan. How much would it take to clean up a five to eight-mile stretch of sand and the one-mile entrance road? Does this demand so much politics? Just hire a number of locals who are in large numbers unemployed. Get the job done first and talk later. For once, the committee should try this approach. I suggest that the following should be taken into consideration.
1. Employ a regular crew, anywhere from 5 to 10 people, to clean the beach, at least 2 to 3 times a week.
2. The entrance road should be more attractive; just clean up and resurface the road and plant palm trees on both sides.
3. As much as I condemn colonialism, promote that history of No 63 beach; there are some beautiful colonial buildings that are in terrible shape. For the readers who do not know No 63 beach, the entrance road was occupied with British colonials, and yes, they used the beach to cool off. Some of the colonial setting is still there but the houses are falling down.
4. Repair and paint the guest house that sits on the entrance road.
5. There are some beautiful trees on this road but they are not well groomed, so some work needs to be done there.
6. Establish a checkpoint and charge a fee to use the beach.
7. Enforce the environment laws, especially against littering and the dumping of waste.
8. Set up a donation fund.
9. Set aside a part of the beach for religious reasons. Some Hindus use the beach to carry out functions; this will give them a stake in beach and therefore they would be more likely to protect it and keep it clean.
Of course, you can add more to this list.
Lomarsh Roopnarine
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Dear Editor:
The escape of a wanted man and his gang from the lawmen at Christmas Falls was a result of poor strategy and planning. Had the soldiers called for more reinforcements and planned a strategy to contain the criminals in the jungle, Rawlins and his men would have been unable to get out from their hiding place and would have been forced to surrender. The army would have been patrolling the rivers, and soldiers would have been placed at strategic points waiting for the criminals to emerge. The army would have had soldiers going behind the criminals while the helicopters would have been circling above scouring the forest.
With such operations there was no way Rawlins could have come out and hijacked a mini bus.
An army officer was correct when he said that the operation to capture the wanted men was poor.
Baldeo Persaud |