Venezuela 🇻🇪 vs. Guyana 🇬🇾 Watch Thread - Essequibo/Esequiba/Esequibo
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
- Start date
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Yup, Maduro is holding all the cards.
look, someone's gonna test the USA in the region... if its anyone, its him. Or Ortega
The minute Maduro tries, the US Air Force will be called upon by Georgetown and the Venezuelans will be pushed back
He’s barely got money coming in for him to survive
He’s barely got money coming in for him to survive
This shyt is heating up 
Guyana to submit written pleadings in border case
Guyana to submit written pleadings in border case
Isaiah BraithwaiteMarch 4, 2022
─ CARICOM reiterates its support
Guyana has informed the Caricom Community (CARICOM) that it will be submitting its written pleadings to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the ongoing Guyana/Venezuela border controversy case.
The submission will speak to the merits of Guyana’s application concerning the validity of the Arbitral Award of 1899. The intended outcome of the case is to have a definitive settlement of the land boundary between the two countries.
This was highlighted in the Communique issued on Thursday at the conclusion of the Thirty-Third Intersessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), held on March 1 and 2, 2022.
CARICOM has echoed its support to Guyana and the preservation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“Heads of Government reiterated their full support for the ongoing judicial process that is intended to bring a peaceful and definitive end to the long-standing controversy between the two countries and urged Venezuela to participate in the process. Heads of Government reaffirmed their firm and unwavering support for the maintenance and preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Guyana,” the Communique stated.
Some $660 million has been budgeted for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to pay legal fees in the border case.
Government, during the consideration of the estimates, reiterated that it will not rest in its efforts to preserve Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In March 2018, Guyana moved to the ICJ to challenge the non-participation of Venezuela, over its disagreement on the legal validity and binding effect of the October 3, 1899 Award. Venezuela had maintained that the ICJ was without jurisdiction to hear the case and had not participated in the matter.
However, in a December 18, 2020, 12-4 majority ruling, the ICJ upheld that it has jurisdiction to entertain Guyana’s contention concerning the validity of the 1899 Award about the frontier between British Guiana and Venezuela, and the related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary.
Guyana to submit written pleadings in border case
Guyana to submit written pleadings in border case
Isaiah BraithwaiteMarch 4, 2022─ CARICOM reiterates its support
Guyana has informed the Caricom Community (CARICOM) that it will be submitting its written pleadings to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the ongoing Guyana/Venezuela border controversy case.
The submission will speak to the merits of Guyana’s application concerning the validity of the Arbitral Award of 1899. The intended outcome of the case is to have a definitive settlement of the land boundary between the two countries.
This was highlighted in the Communique issued on Thursday at the conclusion of the Thirty-Third Intersessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), held on March 1 and 2, 2022.
CARICOM has echoed its support to Guyana and the preservation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“Heads of Government reiterated their full support for the ongoing judicial process that is intended to bring a peaceful and definitive end to the long-standing controversy between the two countries and urged Venezuela to participate in the process. Heads of Government reaffirmed their firm and unwavering support for the maintenance and preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Guyana,” the Communique stated.
Some $660 million has been budgeted for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to pay legal fees in the border case.
Government, during the consideration of the estimates, reiterated that it will not rest in its efforts to preserve Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In March 2018, Guyana moved to the ICJ to challenge the non-participation of Venezuela, over its disagreement on the legal validity and binding effect of the October 3, 1899 Award. Venezuela had maintained that the ICJ was without jurisdiction to hear the case and had not participated in the matter.
However, in a December 18, 2020, 12-4 majority ruling, the ICJ upheld that it has jurisdiction to entertain Guyana’s contention concerning the validity of the 1899 Award about the frontier between British Guiana and Venezuela, and the related question of the definitive settlement of the land boundary.
Guyana should just place another Jim Jones commune in that area and dare Venezuela to do something. But seriously Russia has no interest in Venezuela whatsoever. And if Maduro does anything he will be removed swiftly since the deep state has been itching to take him down
U.S. Officials Travel to Venezuela, a Russia Ally, as the West Isolates Putin
U.S. Officials Travel to Venezuela, a Russia Ally, as the West Isolates Putin
The trip is the highest-level visit by American officials to Caracas in years, driven by a desire to separate Russia from its remaining Latin American allies.
March 5, 2022, 4:57 p.m. ET
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, right, with Yuri Borisov, the deputy prime minister of Russia, in Caracas, Venezuela, in mid-February.Rayner Pena R/EPA, via Shutterstock
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Senior U.S. officials are traveling to Venezuela on Saturday to meet with the government of President Nicolás Maduro, according to people familiar with the matter, as the Biden administration steps up efforts to separate Russia from its remaining international allies amid a widening standoff over Ukraine.
The trip is the highest-level visit by Washington officials to Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, in years. The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Mr. Maduro and closed its embassy in Caracas in 2019, after accusing the authoritarian leader of electoral fraud. The Trump administration then tried to topple Mr. Maduro’s government by sanctioning Venezuelan oil exports and the country’s senior officials, and by recognizing the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as Venezuela’s lawful president.
Mr. Maduro responded to the sanctions by seeking economic and diplomatic help from Russia, as well as from Iran and China. Russian energy companies and banks have been instrumental in allowing Venezuela to continue exporting oil, the country’s biggest source of foreign currency, despite the sanctions, according to U.S. officials, Venezuelan officials and businessmen.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted the United States to pay closer attention to President Vladimir V. Putin’s allies in Latin America, which Washington believes could become security threats if the standoff with Russia deepens, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy matters.
As Russia’s economy craters, the U.S. is seizing on an opportunity to advance its agenda among Latin American autocracies that might start seeing Mr. Putin as an increasingly weak ally.
When the U.S. and its allies began considering sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports this month to punish the country for devastation wrought in Ukraine, prominent voices affiliated with both major American political parties pointed to Venezuela as a potential substitute.
The Amuay oil refinery complex in Punto Fijo, Venezuela, in 2016.Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters
Well-connected Republicans have been involved in talks about restarting the oil trade, including Scott Taylor, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who is working with Robert Stryk, a Washington lobbyist who briefly registered to represent Mr. Maduro’s regime in 2020 and remains in contact with people around it.
Mr. Taylor said he spoke on Friday night to a Venezuelan businessman who signaled that Mr. Maduro’s team was eager to re-engage with the United States.
“We should take this opportunity to achieve a diplomatic win and a wedge between Russia and Venezuela,” he said in a statement.
Trish Regan, a former Fox News host and conservative media personality, called for an alliance with Venezuela to displace Russian oil from the U.S. market.
“Venezuela has THE largest source of oil reserves yet, we’re handing that to the Chinese and Russians?” she wrote on Twitter on Friday.
Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Yuri Borisov, Russia’s deputy prime minister, traveled to Caracas to meet with Mr. Maduro’s officials. Mr. Maduro has spoken to Mr. Putin by telephone at least twice in the past month, according to statements from both governments.
It is unclear how long the U.S. delegation, which includes senior officials from the State Department and the White House, will remain in Caracas or with whom the group will meet. Spokespeople for Mr. Maduro and for the State Department and the National Security Council in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Before the U.S. imposed sanctions, Venezuela sent most of its oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast, whose refineries were built specifically to process Venezuela’s heavy grades of crude.
If the United States curtails the imports of Russian oil, Venezuela would be able to replace some of the lost supplies, said Francisco Monaldi, an expert on Venezuelan energy at Rice University in Houston.
Mr. Maduro appeared open to discussing oil deals with the United States.
“Here lies the oil of Venezuela, which is available for whomever wants to produce and buy it, be it an investor from Asia, Europe or the United States,” he said in a public speech on Thursday.
Mr. Maduro and other Russian allies in Latin America have begun to distance themselves from the war in Ukraine. Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba abstained or did not vote on the two resolutions proposed at the United Nations this week to condemn Russian aggression, and the leaders of Venezuela and Cuba have called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
Sheyla Urdaneta contributed reporting from Maracaibo, Venezuela.
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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
U.S. Officials Meet With Regime in Venezuela, to Discuss Oil Exports to Replace Russia’s
U.S. Officials Meet With Regime in Venezuela, to Discuss Oil Exports to Replace Russia’s
In rare meeting, the two sides discuss lifting of U.S. sanctions that have barred Venezuelan oil exports to American refineries
By Patricia Garip and Juan Forero
Updated March 6, 2022 5:10 pm ET
A Petróleos de Venezuela plant in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Photo: Gaby Oraa/Bloomberg News
The Biden administration is seeking to ease oil sanctions on Venezuela as part of a broader U.S. strategy to temper oil prices that have skyrocketed because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials began rare face-to-face meetings with Venezuelan officials in Caracas over the weekend, with a view to allowing Venezuelan crude oil back on to the open international market, these people said.
The administration also wants to isolate Russia from its most important ally in South America, Venezuela, an essential supplier of crude to the U.S. until economic mismanagement and then sanctions caused the nation’s oil sector to crater.
The proposals being discussed in the Venezuelan capital would ease sanctions for a limited period on U.S. national security grounds. Since the Trump administration began turning the economic screws on Venezuela in 2017 and then leveled sanctions on the oil sector in 2019, Caracas has come to rely on China, Russia and Iran to keep its oil sector afloat. As of 2020, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the country’s state oil company, was producing about 300,000 barrels a day.
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By easing the sanctions now, the U.S. would redirect Venezuelan oil exports out of an opaque China-bound export network and back to Gulf Coast refiners that process the heavy crude Venezuela produces, people familiar with the administration’s thinking on the matter said.
It also would peel Caracas out of the political orbit of Russia, which has helped Venezuela sidestep U.S. sanctions by putting its financial system to work processing payments for PDVSA, as the Venezuelan state oil company is known. And sanctions relief would replace Iran’s supply of condensate—a very light oil that PDVSA uses to dilute its extra-heavy oil—with Western-supplied diluents like naphtha, according to people familiar with the Biden administration’s strategy.
With the help of its allies, Venezuela’s authoritarian regime—which the U.S. accuses of widespread rights abuses—was able to increase production to about 760,000 barrels a day in 2021. That is only a quarter of what it pumped in the 1990s. But Reinaldo Quintero, president of the association representing Venezuelan oil companies, estimated that the country could get production up to 1.2 million barrels a day in under eight months, particularly if Chevron, the only major American oil producer in Venezuela, can jack up pumping.
Mr. Quintero, who with other Venezuelan oil company representatives has met with U.S. officials in Washington in the past to discuss sanctions relief, said they have worked to convince “the American government that the vacuum they leave behind in Venezuela is occupied by another economic actor.”
The U.S. in 2020 imported about 7.86 million barrels of oil from many countries, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Russia exported about 540,000 barrels a day to the U.S. in 2021, a little under what Venezuela exported to American refineries in 2018 before sanctions shut off the spigot.
Mr. Quintero said with the U.S. weighing cutting off Russian exports, Venezuela could in time replace Moscow. “How are they going to resolve the issue of the crude they need if they don’t consider Venezuela, which can replace a good slice,” Mr. Quintero said.
But even without sanctions, Venezuela faces serious challenges to increasing oil production, said Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan who is director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
There have been no new wells drilled in Venezuela for months, he said, and to reach significant production levels Venezuela would need investments of $12 billion a year for five years. The country that was essential in providing crude to the Allied effort in World War II now pays down debt with oil to China. And Mr. Monaldi said its production is a “drop in the bucket in the world oil market.”
“This won’t help ease the pain at the pump for American consumers,” Mr. Monaldi said of the possible lifting of oil sanctions.
The visit to Venezuela by senior American officials, first reported by the New York Times, isn’t just about oil, people familiar with their strategy said. The delegation included Jim Story, the Bogotá, Colombia-based ambassador to Venezuela; Juan Gonzalez, the White House special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs; and Roger Carstens, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
They also came to discuss the fate of six employees of PDVSA’s Houston-based refining subsidiary, Citgo, who were arrested in 2017 and convicted of crimes the U.S. says are trumped up. Five are naturalized American citizens and a sixth is a permanent U.S. resident.
There also are three former U.S. servicemen jailed in Venezuela. Luke Denman and Airan Berry were arrested after a botched incursion by dissident Venezuelan soldiers attempting to seize power in May 2020. And in September, 2020, Matthew Heath was detained on a country road near Venezuela’s coast and accused of terrorism and spying.
Even before the war in Ukraine, intermediaries for the regime and the Biden administration had been discussing the detained Americans, sanctions and the proposed resumption of talks between the Venezuelan government and opposition to pave the way for free and fair presidential elections in 2024, people who know about the discussions said. For the Biden administration, the war in Ukraine—and the resulting surge in oil prices—drove home the importance of advancing the talks, those people say.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “fulfilled his often expressed desire to talk directly with the United States,” said Guillermo Bolinaga, a Venezuelan who is a partner at U.S.-based consulting firm Opportunitas Advisors. “And not just talking to the U.S., but the U.S. went to Caracas to talk to him.”
The weekend’s development in Venezuela is welcomed by Wall Street firms and other investors who have been talking to emissaries from Venezuela about a possible restructuring of $60 billion in debt. The regime is offering infrastructure concessions, oil-and-gas reserves and asset privatizations, while pressing the investors to coax the U.S. to consider lifting sanctions.
The talks between the administration and the regime, though, carry political liabilities for Democrats, particularly in Florida, where a growing Venezuelan exile community in Miami is strongly opposed to softening the hard line on Mr. Maduro.
In a message Sunday via his Twitter account, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said President Biden was using Russia “as an excuse to do the deal they always wanted to do anyway with the #MaduroRegime.”
“Rather than produce more American oil he wants to replace the oil we buy from one murderous dictator with oil from another murderous dictator,” Mr. Rubio wrote.
If there is sanctions relief, Chevron, PDVSA’s main Western joint venture partner, would be a big winner. The company would be able to restore up to 150,000 barrels a day in six weeks, people familiar with the firm’s operations say. Repsol of Spain and ONGC of India could add more, those people said.
U.S. oil services companies Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes andWeatherford International would play a role in reactivating Venezuelan oil wells. These companies, like Chevron, were allowed by a sanctions waiver to stay in Venezuela but under tight restrictions.
Lifting sanctions would also put an estimated 23 million barrels of Venezuelan oil that is in storage tanks and oil tankers onto the market. This would add 750,000 barrels a day to global supply in the first month of sanctions relief, on top of any incremental production.
Corrections & Amplifications
Juan Gonzalez visited Caracas as White House special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs. An earlier version of this article incorrectly described his role as deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. Separately, intermediaries for the Maduro regime and the Biden administration had been discussing issues such as sanctions before the war in Ukraine. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the discussions had been between the Maduro regime and the Bush administration. (Corrected on March 6)
Write to Juan Forero at Juan.Forero@wsj.com
U.S. Officials Meet With Regime in Venezuela, to Discuss Oil Exports to Replace Russia’s
In rare meeting, the two sides discuss lifting of U.S. sanctions that have barred Venezuelan oil exports to American refineries
By Patricia Garip and Juan Forero
Updated March 6, 2022 5:10 pm ET
A Petróleos de Venezuela plant in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Photo: Gaby Oraa/Bloomberg News
The Biden administration is seeking to ease oil sanctions on Venezuela as part of a broader U.S. strategy to temper oil prices that have skyrocketed because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials began rare face-to-face meetings with Venezuelan officials in Caracas over the weekend, with a view to allowing Venezuelan crude oil back on to the open international market, these people said.
The administration also wants to isolate Russia from its most important ally in South America, Venezuela, an essential supplier of crude to the U.S. until economic mismanagement and then sanctions caused the nation’s oil sector to crater.
The proposals being discussed in the Venezuelan capital would ease sanctions for a limited period on U.S. national security grounds. Since the Trump administration began turning the economic screws on Venezuela in 2017 and then leveled sanctions on the oil sector in 2019, Caracas has come to rely on China, Russia and Iran to keep its oil sector afloat. As of 2020, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the country’s state oil company, was producing about 300,000 barrels a day.
The 10-Point.
A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.
By easing the sanctions now, the U.S. would redirect Venezuelan oil exports out of an opaque China-bound export network and back to Gulf Coast refiners that process the heavy crude Venezuela produces, people familiar with the administration’s thinking on the matter said.
It also would peel Caracas out of the political orbit of Russia, which has helped Venezuela sidestep U.S. sanctions by putting its financial system to work processing payments for PDVSA, as the Venezuelan state oil company is known. And sanctions relief would replace Iran’s supply of condensate—a very light oil that PDVSA uses to dilute its extra-heavy oil—with Western-supplied diluents like naphtha, according to people familiar with the Biden administration’s strategy.
With the help of its allies, Venezuela’s authoritarian regime—which the U.S. accuses of widespread rights abuses—was able to increase production to about 760,000 barrels a day in 2021. That is only a quarter of what it pumped in the 1990s. But Reinaldo Quintero, president of the association representing Venezuelan oil companies, estimated that the country could get production up to 1.2 million barrels a day in under eight months, particularly if Chevron, the only major American oil producer in Venezuela, can jack up pumping.
Mr. Quintero, who with other Venezuelan oil company representatives has met with U.S. officials in Washington in the past to discuss sanctions relief, said they have worked to convince “the American government that the vacuum they leave behind in Venezuela is occupied by another economic actor.”
The U.S. in 2020 imported about 7.86 million barrels of oil from many countries, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Russia exported about 540,000 barrels a day to the U.S. in 2021, a little under what Venezuela exported to American refineries in 2018 before sanctions shut off the spigot.
Mr. Quintero said with the U.S. weighing cutting off Russian exports, Venezuela could in time replace Moscow. “How are they going to resolve the issue of the crude they need if they don’t consider Venezuela, which can replace a good slice,” Mr. Quintero said.
But even without sanctions, Venezuela faces serious challenges to increasing oil production, said Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan who is director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
There have been no new wells drilled in Venezuela for months, he said, and to reach significant production levels Venezuela would need investments of $12 billion a year for five years. The country that was essential in providing crude to the Allied effort in World War II now pays down debt with oil to China. And Mr. Monaldi said its production is a “drop in the bucket in the world oil market.”
“This won’t help ease the pain at the pump for American consumers,” Mr. Monaldi said of the possible lifting of oil sanctions.
The visit to Venezuela by senior American officials, first reported by the New York Times, isn’t just about oil, people familiar with their strategy said. The delegation included Jim Story, the Bogotá, Colombia-based ambassador to Venezuela; Juan Gonzalez, the White House special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs; and Roger Carstens, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.
They also came to discuss the fate of six employees of PDVSA’s Houston-based refining subsidiary, Citgo, who were arrested in 2017 and convicted of crimes the U.S. says are trumped up. Five are naturalized American citizens and a sixth is a permanent U.S. resident.
There also are three former U.S. servicemen jailed in Venezuela. Luke Denman and Airan Berry were arrested after a botched incursion by dissident Venezuelan soldiers attempting to seize power in May 2020. And in September, 2020, Matthew Heath was detained on a country road near Venezuela’s coast and accused of terrorism and spying.
Even before the war in Ukraine, intermediaries for the regime and the Biden administration had been discussing the detained Americans, sanctions and the proposed resumption of talks between the Venezuelan government and opposition to pave the way for free and fair presidential elections in 2024, people who know about the discussions said. For the Biden administration, the war in Ukraine—and the resulting surge in oil prices—drove home the importance of advancing the talks, those people say.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “fulfilled his often expressed desire to talk directly with the United States,” said Guillermo Bolinaga, a Venezuelan who is a partner at U.S.-based consulting firm Opportunitas Advisors. “And not just talking to the U.S., but the U.S. went to Caracas to talk to him.”
The weekend’s development in Venezuela is welcomed by Wall Street firms and other investors who have been talking to emissaries from Venezuela about a possible restructuring of $60 billion in debt. The regime is offering infrastructure concessions, oil-and-gas reserves and asset privatizations, while pressing the investors to coax the U.S. to consider lifting sanctions.
The talks between the administration and the regime, though, carry political liabilities for Democrats, particularly in Florida, where a growing Venezuelan exile community in Miami is strongly opposed to softening the hard line on Mr. Maduro.
In a message Sunday via his Twitter account, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said President Biden was using Russia “as an excuse to do the deal they always wanted to do anyway with the #MaduroRegime.”
“Rather than produce more American oil he wants to replace the oil we buy from one murderous dictator with oil from another murderous dictator,” Mr. Rubio wrote.
If there is sanctions relief, Chevron, PDVSA’s main Western joint venture partner, would be a big winner. The company would be able to restore up to 150,000 barrels a day in six weeks, people familiar with the firm’s operations say. Repsol of Spain and ONGC of India could add more, those people said.
U.S. oil services companies Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes andWeatherford International would play a role in reactivating Venezuelan oil wells. These companies, like Chevron, were allowed by a sanctions waiver to stay in Venezuela but under tight restrictions.
Lifting sanctions would also put an estimated 23 million barrels of Venezuelan oil that is in storage tanks and oil tankers onto the market. This would add 750,000 barrels a day to global supply in the first month of sanctions relief, on top of any incremental production.
Corrections & Amplifications
Juan Gonzalez visited Caracas as White House special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs. An earlier version of this article incorrectly described his role as deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. Separately, intermediaries for the Maduro regime and the Biden administration had been discussing issues such as sanctions before the war in Ukraine. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the discussions had been between the Maduro regime and the Bush administration. (Corrected on March 6)
Write to Juan Forero at Juan.Forero@wsj.com
Another Conflict Is Brewing in the Caribbean
Another Conflict Is Brewing in the Caribbean
Russia’s war in Ukraine stirs Venezuela’s dreams of conquest in oil-rich Guyana.
foreignpolicy.com
March 22, 2022, 11:20 AM
If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has taught us anything, it’s that authoritarian leaders consider themselves above the law—unrestrained by the sovereignty declarations, human rights protections, and international institutions established after World War II to prevent future conflict. For Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ilk, the rules of the international order were made to be broken. And his latest exploits show that, without a credible deterrent, territorial conquest is on the table.
A powder keg much closer to the United States could be one of the world’s next tests: the Guyana-Venezuela border, where the two countries have been embroiled in a bitter fight over a contested region known as the Essequibo.
The origins of the dispute date to 1831, the year after Venezuela became a sovereign state. At the time, the British Empire was consolidating its territories along the northern coast of South America, which it had purchased from the Netherlands in 1814. The area to the west of the Essequibo River was among them and became part of British Guiana. Spain had previously claimed some of this land, yet Madrid’s preoccupation with independence movements across Latin America prevented Spanish authorities from contesting British occupation of the region. But following Venezuela’s independence, and then the discovery of gold in the Essequibo in the 1850s, Venezuelan authorities asserted their inherited claim, going as far as breaking diplomatic ties with the United Kingdom in 1887 until the countries could reach a compromise over the border.
In 1897, both Venezuela and British Guiana ceded jurisdiction of the Essequibo dispute to an international tribunal in Paris, composed of jurists from the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia. An 1899 ruling allowed Venezuela to retain the Orinoco River basin, while British Guiana was awarded more than 90 percent of the densely forested land between the Orinoco and Essequibo rivers. Today, that area represents some two-thirds of Guyana’s national territory.
For six decades, Venezuela accepted and respected its borders with British Guiana, including during the negotiation of a 1932 tripartite agreement also involving Brazil that confirmed the countries’ territorial boundaries. But in 1962, just after the United Kingdom entertained the first serious deliberations over Guyanese independence, Venezuelan officials declared the 1899 ruling “null and void” over possible procedural errors that surfaced decades later, including an accusation of collusion between the British and Russian jurists. Venezuela’s militarization of the border region ensued, especially following Guyana’s independence in 1966. Facing overwhelming diplomatic pressure to resolve the matter peacefully, the new Guyanese government and officials in Caracas eventually signed the Port of Spain Protocol in 1970, placing a moratorium on the dispute that lasted until 1982.
To avoid escalation following the protocol’s expiration, the United Nations began brokering diplomatic exchanges between Venezuela and Guyana. In 1990, the U.N. created the Good Offices Process to mediate the dispute. But with the two countries unable to reach an agreement after nearly three decades, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres referred the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2018, where it sits today. Although the case has stalled, the ICJ confirmed in a 2020 hearing that the body has authority to hear the suit.
Nevertheless, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro considers the ICJ’s jurisdiction to be invalid, so his country has not participated in the case. Maduro, who himself faces an International Criminal Court probe into crimes against humanity committed during Venezuela’s ongoing domestic political crisis, seeks to avoid any international arbitration of Venezuelan affairs. The United States’ support for the ICJ’s involvement, as relations between Washington and Caracas remain hostile, casts further suspicion on the process, especially since the U.S. government has repeatedly withdrawn its own participation in ICJ arbitration.
Now, the Essequibo region’s oil fields, discovered in 2015 by ExxonMobil, have catapulted Guyana, one of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest countries, to join the ranks of the world’s top energy markets. As rising fuel prices due to Russia’s war in Ukraine pinch consumer pockets around the globe, Guyana’s export potential is quickly coming into focus. The country’s light sweet crude has drawn investors from near and far, including the U.S. oil company Hess Corp. and the China National Offshore Oil Corp. At projected rates of extraction, Guyana stands to become the highest per capita oil producer in the world by 2035—possibly the “next United Arab Emirates,” according to some.
Maduro has vowed to “reconquer” the Essequibo.
This is a destiny Maduro seems intent on preventing—either directly or indirectly, with Russian support. Putin has long extended a lifeline to the beleaguered authoritarian government in Caracas, helping one of Latin America’s largest energy producers to offload sanctioned oil, providing personal protection for Maduro against assassination or usurpation, and sending the country tens of billions of dollars in military hardware. Putin in the past deployed Russian nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela and floated the idea of sending Russian troops to the country, supposedly to shore up its sovereignty. In February, Moscow had to clarify that its military aid to Venezuela would not be used against neighboring Colombia following Maduro’s militarization of the western border.
But Putin’s backing as well as his defiance of international norms could give new wings to Maduro’s territorial ambitions to the east. Venezuelan intimidation—particularly against Guyana—was already on the rise prior to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
In 2013, Venezuela’s navy intercepted a Panamanian-flagged research vessel off the Guyanese coast. In 2018, Maduro sent his navy to interrupt an ExxonMobil exploration operation in Guyanese waters. And last year, the Venezuelan military detained two Guyanese fishing boats for weeks while sending fighter jets to buzz Guyanese towns along the border.
Maduro has vowed to “reconquer” the Essequibo, issuing decrees in 2015 and 2021 to establish Venezuelan maritime boundaries that encompass Guyana’s exclusive economic zone and repeatedly deploying military reinforcements to the disputed border since 2015. In 2021, a joint statement about Venezuela’s eastward claims released by Maduro and his own opposition represented a rare point of agreement between the dueling political forces in the country. Conveniently, Venezuela’s plans for the Essequibo focus the electorate’s nationalism at a time when Venezuela’s dire economic, humanitarian, and security crises worsen.
Furthermore, tepid condemnations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from some Latin American leaders—including the presidents of the region’s biggest economies, Brazil and Mexico—leave the door open for Maduro to pursue Venezuela’s Essequibo claims aggressively.
And despite increasing U.S. security cooperation with Guyana, U.S. rhetoric and training have hardly strengthened that country’s posture. Unlike the well-armed Ukrainian military, Guyana’s defense forces are outnumbered more than 100 to 1 against Venezuela’s sprawling security apparatus and have only a handful of patrol craft to defend the country’s waters. Nor is Guyana a signatory to the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, meaning that other countries in South America are unlikely to defend Guyana militarily even if they reject Maduro’s belligerence.
But cross-border aggression in the Caribbean Basin is not a foregone conclusion. Rising oil prices could help Maduro find new customers willing to subvert U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, replenishing governmental coffers. In turn, Maduro may feel less pressure to rally the country if he is able to meet popular demands. The Venezuelan leader has also increasingly relied on his armed forces to administer public services and provide internal security, weakening the military’s tactical footing and hindering Maduro’s ability to mobilize troops abroad.
Preventing conflict over the Essequibo in the long run requires ramping up disincentives for Venezuelan cross-border aggression today. Diplomatic support for the ICJ process from multilateral organizations and their member states is a good place to start. The Caribbean Community’s commitment to the preservation of Guyana’s territorial integrity and the ICJ process is unwavering, but a divided Organization of American States (OAS)—which includes representatives of what the OAS recognizes as a Venezuelan interim government led by opposition leader Juan Guaidó—has prevented a consensus declaration in that forum.
Caribbean countries with their own offshore oil interests—including Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Barbados—would do well to file their objections to Maduro’s saber-rattling, reminding him that their votes or abstentions in international organizations in his favor have long reinforced his administration’s international legitimacy but that such support isn’t a blank check.
Additionally, Guyana’s security cooperation with other South American and Caribbean governments should focus on acquiring defensive weapons, surveillance technology, and patrol craft. In particular, Guyana would benefit from deeper collaboration with Colombia, with its riverine expertise and experience de-escalating in the face of routine Venezuelan provocation.
Moreover, China’s investments in Guyana’s oil industry should make Maduro think twice about escalating his aggression toward Guyana lest he endanger his relationship with China, Venezuela’s other top benefactor. To this end, China could use its considerable clout in both countries to advance a diplomatic settlement over the Essequibo.
For its part, the United States should explore capitalizing on Russia’s growing international isolation to entice Maduro into new diplomatic and economic arrangements. A recent White House delegation to Caracas prompted Maduro to release two American political prisoners and resume dialogue aimed at resolving Venezuela’s political stalemate. However, additional concessions from Maduro are needed before the United States takes steps to retool sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry. Any such reconfiguration should prioritize alleviating the country’s long-running humanitarian crisis and be conditioned on progress toward restoring Venezuela’s democracy. Yet the country’s measured reintegration into global markets could generate newfound leverage for the United States and its partners to dissuade Caracas’s warmongering in the Essequibo while also creating fissures between Moscow and its closest Latin American ally. After all, international economic pressure has proved the West’s most effective tool against Putin in recent weeks.
The madman theory of international relations holds that a national leader’s perceived irrationality and unpredictability can improve a country’s bargaining position in foreign relations, as other countries fear antagonizing an unstable and potentially dangerous head of state. But, as Gideon Rachman notes, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a stark reminder that “the line between acting like a madman and being a madman is disconcertingly thin.” Maduro has pursued volatility as a matter of policy. We should take his threats toward Guyana over the Essequibo at face value. To do otherwise would betray our current reality and the interests of peace and stability in the Americas.
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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
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that doesn't justify using nuclear weapons
Guyana expects billion-dollar oil earnings this year
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Guyana is likely to earn more than $1 billion this year from its production share of offshore oil exports — more than it will garner from gold, bauxite, timber or any other sector, the central bank said Monday.
apnews.com
Guyana expects billion-dollar oil earnings this year
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Guyana is likely to earn more than $1 billion this year from its production share of offshore oil exports — more than it will garner from gold, bauxite, timber or any other sector, the central bank said Monday.The production sharing agreement with American ExxonMobil, Hess Oil of the U.S. and China’s National Offshore Oil Company will give the country an estimated $1.1 billion from the 13 million barrels of oil it is entitled to this year, central bank Governor Gobind Ganga told The Associated Press.
The small South American nation, which hosts the headquarters of the 15-nation Caribbean Community, became an oil producer in 2019 when Exxon lifted the first batch of oil from the seabed — four years after it had announced a massive find about 120 miles offshore Guyana.
The consortium has already drilled more than 30 successful wells, mainly from its Liza Field in the Stabroek Block. Current production is about 350,000 barrels per day but this is expected to more than double when two other oil fields come on stream in the next three years, Exxon has said.
Until oil production began, gold and rice exports had dominated the country’s foreign exchange earnings. With global petroleum prices high, the country expects to enjoy a windfall both from direct oil sales and the massive support system for the industry, including the construction of onshore facilities.
“This is historically the largest amount of revenue we will earn from any single sector this year. This is very obvious with the price of oil today,” Ganga said. Finance Minister Ashni Singh recently projected that gross domestic product would grow by 56% this year, by far the fastest pace in the hemisphere.
The 2015 announcement by Exxon that it had found some of the world’s lightest crude oil has triggered a rush by most of the major producers, with Repsol of Spain, Tullow oil of the United Kingdom and several others either buying into existing oil blocks or negotiating their own.
Commercial oil and gas deposits have been discovered in two additional blocks neighboring Exxon’s, while companies neighboring Suriname have also found large quantities of oil and gas in the basin that the U.S. Geological Survey says contains at least 16 billion barrels of oil.