Off the coast of South America, a quiet but consequential drama is unfolding: Exxon Mobil has placed one of its largest strategic bets on Guyana's offshore oil fields, a rare new frontier in a world of depleting reserves. Yet the promise of that wealth is shadowed by the fragility of the nation hosting it — a country navigating ethnic tensions and shifting governments — and by Venezuela's decades-old claim to the very ground beneath the oil. What emerges is an old human story: the discovery of abundance in an unstable place, and the question of whether order can hold long enough for anyone to