After a harsh endofyear message in which he said Venezuelans were not afraid of the British, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused his Guyanese counterpart Irfaan Ali, President Lula, of the Common Market and the Community of the Caribbean (Caricom) ” and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac).
Maduro was referring to the fact that Guyana had agreed to receive the British ship Her Majesty Trent into its territorial waters to take part in maneuvers with local forces. The Trent is a 90 meter long, two ton patrol ship armed with a cannon and a few machine guns.
Although it does not have much offensive power, sending a British ship to a former colony is reminiscent of the Falklands War in 1982, when the United Kingdom sent an armada to expel Argentine troops who had invaded what the British called the Falklands and South Georgia.
We are experiencing a moment of turbulence. Since Guyana does not behave like the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, Guyana behaves like “British Guiana” and accepts a warship coming to its shores and threatening Venezuela from its shores.
On December 14, Maduro and Guyana's President Irfaan Ali met in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean for a meeting coorganized by Brazilian diplomacy. President Lula's special adviser, Celso Amorim, was present.
Despite the diplomatic gesture, Guyana maintained its position that the GuyanaEssequibo issue will be decided by the International Court of Justice. In this case, Venezuela refers to the Geneva Convention of 1966, the year in which Guyana's independence was formalized. According to the agreement, the two neighbors would reach an agreement through direct negotiations.
THE POWER OF EXXON MOBIL
Essequibo Guyana has an area slightly larger than Acre and a population of 120,000 people. It corresponds to two thirds of Guyana.
On December 2, 95% of voters in Venezuela approved incorporation into a Venezuelan state and guaranteed citizenship to its residents.
Opposition to Nicolas Maduro, who will seek to remove him from power in elections scheduled for 2024, is consistent with the historic claim to the territory.
The Essequibo region is rich in minerals, especially gold.
But what finally sparked the dispute were the discoveries of oil and gas by the multinational Exxon Mobil in an exploration block called Stabroek, which stretches across the disputed territorial sea.
With just 800,000 inhabitants, Guyana is considered the future Dubai in South America.
Exxon Mobil reports on its website that it began operations in Guyana in 2008, made its first discoveries in 2015 and began exploration in 2019.
By 2028, the country is expected to produce 1.2 million barrels per day.
The Orinoco oil province is advancing across the disputed territorial sea. reproduction
According to a report by British Petroleum, Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, around 300 billion barrels.
However, much of it is heavy oil from the socalled Orinoco belt, which is more expensive to refine.
In addition, the Orinoco oil province in Venezuela is advancing and reaching the territorial sea disputed with Guyana.
Guyana's reserves are particularly important to the United States.
Washington is trying to shift its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, which is very expensive due to military investments, to more peaceful regions such as Africa and South America.
The Brazilian presalt, the biggest discovery of the last 50 years, has already been dominated: 60% of all crude oil exports from Brazil are produced by transnational companies, notably the AngloBritish Shell.
With the Biden administration embroiled in negotiations with Venezuela and subject to nearly a thousand different sanctions from the West, there is speculation that the United Kingdom is acting by proxy so as not to compromise Washington.
In addition to supporting the Venezuelan opposition in this year's elections, the Biden administration is betting on PDVSA oil to mitigate the decline of Russian energy on the market.
In the same interview, Nicolas Maduro said he expected Venezuela to finalize its membership of the BRIC nations at the group's next summit in Moscow.
He openly attacked Argentine President Javier Milei, who had abandoned Brazil's negotiated entry into the group.
Javier Milei's move is to take Argentina into the 19th century. The Milei project is a construction [do Ocidente] To get Argentina in its claws, to take it out of the multipolar world, to turn it into a vassal of the unipolar imperial world and to turn it into a new colony of South America, destroying the state, destroying its economy, destroying its identity; And the move he took to lead Argentina out of this BRIC monstrosity is one of the stupidest things Milei has done against Argentina.
For details on Maduro's speech and the military implications, see the Global Forum program this Tuesday, December 2nd: