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Кина има дел од нафтените полиња во Гвајана.
Криза во Венецуела
- Креатор на темата Bateman
- Време на започнување
da... i indija ima del a i ogromno malcinstvo tamu, englezite nosle iljadnici indijci da rabotat na vremete ama sepak shevron mislam deka ja ima najgolemata funkcionalna eksplotacija... kako i da e usa i eu ke bidat najzagrozeni, kina si potpisa dogovor so saudicite plus so rusija ova sekako im bese poveke kako rezervna opcija, ne bi me iznenadilo tokmu oni da tankiraat nafta za EU od tamu.
Vanlok
deus ex machina
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Latin America On Edge As Venezuela's Maduro Holds Referendum Whether To Invade Oil-Rich Neighbor Guyana
In a move that has prompted many to wonder which is the bigger banana republic, Venezuela or the US, Joe Biden's new BFF, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro (who has promised to export a few barrels of oil to the US president - now that draining the SPR is no longer an option - to keep gas prices low ahead of the 2024 presidential election in exchange for sanction relaxation and defacto recognition by the White House that Maduro is the dictatorially "democratically" elected president of Venezuela, making a mockery of a decade of Western virtue-signaling sanctions), on Sunday Caracas is set to hold a referendum among Venezuelans on annexing (i.e., invading and taking over) a whopping 160,000 sq km of extremely oil-rich land in neighbouring Guyana.
Why now? Why only now when Caracas has for more than 200 years claimed rights over Essequibo, a vast swath of the territory Guyana? Simple: because as we said several days ago, it was only a few months ago that Maduro realized he has leverage over the US president of the "most powerful nation in the world" and get away with anything... even invading a sovereign nation.
Of course, (oil rich but extraction poor) Venezuela's heightened interest at this expanse of Amazon jungle springs in part from its resource riches, including offshore oil deposits that have since 2019 made Guyana the world’s fastest-growing economy. Another reason lies closer to home for Venezuela’s strongman leader Nicolás Maduro: elections next year. But at the end of the day, had Biden not signed a smoky back-room deal with Maduro, admitting he needs the dictator's oil in exchange for what appears to be a diplomatic blank check, none of this would have happened. Instead, we are now facing actual war between two nations which between them have some of the largest oil deposits in the world.
As the FT notes, the potential for Venezuela, an ally of Russia, to follow the referendum with an incursion into western-leaning Guyana has raised concerns in the region. Brazil this week said it had increased the military presence in its northern areas, which border both countries.
“On Sunday December 3, we will respond to the provocations of Exxon, the US Southern Command, and the president of Guyana with a people’s vote,” Maduro said during a broadcast of his weekly television program on November 20.
Guyana correctly fears that the referendum is be a pretext for a land grab, and has appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt the referendum — a move that Caracas has rejected, though its claim to the land is largely internationally unrecognised.
It isn't: on Friday, judges at the World Court on Friday ordered Venezuela to refrain from taking any action that would alter the situation on the ground. The court did not expressly forbid Venezuela to hold a planned Dec. 3 referendum over its rights to the region around the Esequibo river, the subject of the long-running border dispute, as Guyana has requested. However, judges at the International Court of Justice - as the World Court is formally known - made clear that any concrete action to alter the status quo should be stopped.
"The court observes that the situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute is that Guyana administers and exercises control over that area," presiding judge Joan Donoghue said. "Venezuela must refrain from taking any action which would modify that situation," she added
“This is a textbook example of annexation,” Paul Reichler, a US lawyer representing Guyana before the ICJ, said in The Hague last month, claiming that Venezuela was preparing a military build-up in the Essequibo region in case it wished to enforce the outcome of the referendum.
For its part, Caracas said that its troops were carrying out anti-illegal mining operations near the territory, a sparsely populated region that is home to about 200,000 Guyanese who speak English and indigenous languages, though little Spanish.
Meanwhile in pro-Maduro Brazil, local media reported that a senator for the state of Roraima said the defense minister had agreed to his requests for military reinforcements in the municipality of Pacaraima, a strategic location for access to Essequibo. The defence ministry said: “Defence actions have been intensified in the northern border region of the country, promoting a greater military presence.” It wasn't immediately clear if Brazil's socialist leader Lula is planning on aiding his comrade Maduro in invading and pillaging Guyana's oil, but it would be par for the socialist course, especially when the US president is implicitly approving your actions.
That said, analysts question whether Venezuela will genuinely seek to annex the territory. They argue the referendum exercise is aimed at bolstering Maduro’s domestic support ahead of elections that Venezuela agreed to hold in exchange for relief from debilitating sanctions imposed by the US.
“Political calculations are driving Maduro to escalate tensions in an attempt to stir up nationalist sentiment, but those same political calculations also limit his military options,” said Theodore Kahn, director for the Andean region at the consultancy Control Risks.
“An actual invasion would shut the door to further negotiations with the US and force the Biden administration to reimpose oil sector sanctions.”
Come to think of it, that's a joke of a deterrent, considering Maduro had no problem living with sanctions for years. If Maduro were to get his grubby hands on some of the most state of the art oil facilities in the world - as a reminder, Guyana is where Exxon has invested billions to extract much of the country's oil- he would do so in a heartbeat.
Still, Maduro needs to mobilise party loyalists to defend two decades of socialist rule during which his party and its predecessors have turned Caracas into an international pariah, shattered its state-run oil industry, fueled mass emigration and empowered violent gangs.
Luis Vicente León, who runs Caracas-based research company Datanálisis, said the government was using the referendum to reduce the perceived impact of a pre-election primary held by the opposition in October despite government disapproval. The primary drew 2.4mn voters to the polls, well above expectations.
“It’s also a test of the government’s capacity to engage its political machinery and mobilise voters,” León said. “Alongside that, it pressures the opposition to take a position on a sensitive subject and gives [Maduro] a potential excuse to declare a state of emergency and avoid the election altogether.”
Maduro, in office since his firebrand predecessor Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013, has yet to officially announce his candidacy in the upcoming elections. However, he is widely expected to run despite approval ratings of just 20 per cent, according to Datanálisis, amid an economic and humanitarian crisis.
Hilarious, Maduro’s re-election in 2018 was regarded by the US and its allies as fraudulent, but so much has changed since then, well not that much: just Biden becoming president and folding to Maduro's demands in exchange for oil. Seeking to entice him into allowing a “free and fair” election this time (please don't laugh) the US last month relaxed sanctions on oil, gold and secondary financial markets for six months. The move followed a deal between Maduro and a US-backed faction of the opposition to resume political talks.
Yet hopes of a political opening were tempered when just days later, the government-backed Supreme Justice Tribunal suspended the results of the opposition primary, which was convincingly won by María Corina Machado.
Machado, a pro-market former lawmaker who once called for external military intervention in Venezuela, is banned from holding office at present, something she claims will not stop her from running.
While the government and the fractious opposition agree that the Essequibo region is part of Venezuela’s territory, Machado has said the referendum is a “distraction” that must be suspended. She advocates settling the dispute at the ICJ.
The referendum will put five questions to Venezuela’s public. One seeks approval for granting all residents of the Essequibo region Venezuelan citizenship and creating a new state within Venezuela, while another asks voters if they recognise the jurisdiction of the ICJ to rule on the matter. Both would likely lead to a military invasion.
In April, the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to decide on the territorial dispute, following a request from Guyana in 2018 to confirm the border that was drawn in arbitration in 1899 between Venezuela and what was then British Guiana, a colony. A final ruling could take years, however.
“It is not an exaggeration to describe the current threat to Guyana as existential and the need for provisional measures as urgent,” Carl Greenidge, who leads Guyana’s delegation at the ICJ, told judges in The Hague with reference to the referendum.
A specialised US army delegation visited Guyana this week, and discussed “processes to enhance both countries’ military readiness and capabilities to respond to security threats,” said the US embassy in Georgetown. Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana’s vice-president, said last week that “all the options available for us to defend our country will be pursued. Every option.”
Caracas has long held that the Essequibo river to the region’s east is its natural border, as it was during Spanish rule before 1899. But Venezuela’s interest in pressing that claim has fluctuated. In 2004, while seeking international support for his Bolivarian revolution, Chávez said in Guyana that Georgetown had the right to grant concessions in the Essequibo territory.
But since 2015, when ExxonMobil announced it had found oil beneath the waters off the Essequibo coast in the Stabroek Block, Caracas has adopted a more bellicose tone (well, of course).
In October this year, the US major — which leads a consortium producing oil in the South American country — made another find in the waters claimed by Venezuela. Drilling bids were awarded to companies including Exxon, French major Total, and local company Sispro. Francisco Monaldi, a Latin America energy expert at Rice University in Houston, said: “So far Exxon’s wells and discoveries are in the area north of Guyana’s undisputed land territory, but the awarded oil blocks do go into the disputed waters.”
Oil is transforming the Guyanese economy, which grew 62 per cent last year, according to the IMF, and is projected to expand another 37 per cent this year. With around 11bn barrels in reserves and a population of just 800,000, the country has the largest amount of oil per capita in the world.
Meanwhile, Venezuela has the world’s largest proven reserves, and in its heyday at the turn of the century pumped about 3mn barrels per day, but mismanagement, corruption and sanctions led production to collapse. In September this year, it pumped 735,000 bpd.
Exxon said that “border issues are for governments and appropriate international organisations to address”.
Still, we wouldn't be surprised if Darren Woods is quietly putting together a mercenary army to quietly take out Maduro. It should cost him at most 2-3 days worth of oil extraction revenues.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/VGYQ2KEVN5IFHPKECR4WXUBMAI.jpg)
www.reuters.com
In a move that has prompted many to wonder which is the bigger banana republic, Venezuela or the US, Joe Biden's new BFF, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro (who has promised to export a few barrels of oil to the US president - now that draining the SPR is no longer an option - to keep gas prices low ahead of the 2024 presidential election in exchange for sanction relaxation and defacto recognition by the White House that Maduro is the dictatorially "democratically" elected president of Venezuela, making a mockery of a decade of Western virtue-signaling sanctions), on Sunday Caracas is set to hold a referendum among Venezuelans on annexing (i.e., invading and taking over) a whopping 160,000 sq km of extremely oil-rich land in neighbouring Guyana.
Why now? Why only now when Caracas has for more than 200 years claimed rights over Essequibo, a vast swath of the territory Guyana? Simple: because as we said several days ago, it was only a few months ago that Maduro realized he has leverage over the US president of the "most powerful nation in the world" and get away with anything... even invading a sovereign nation.
Of course, (oil rich but extraction poor) Venezuela's heightened interest at this expanse of Amazon jungle springs in part from its resource riches, including offshore oil deposits that have since 2019 made Guyana the world’s fastest-growing economy. Another reason lies closer to home for Venezuela’s strongman leader Nicolás Maduro: elections next year. But at the end of the day, had Biden not signed a smoky back-room deal with Maduro, admitting he needs the dictator's oil in exchange for what appears to be a diplomatic blank check, none of this would have happened. Instead, we are now facing actual war between two nations which between them have some of the largest oil deposits in the world.
As the FT notes, the potential for Venezuela, an ally of Russia, to follow the referendum with an incursion into western-leaning Guyana has raised concerns in the region. Brazil this week said it had increased the military presence in its northern areas, which border both countries.
“On Sunday December 3, we will respond to the provocations of Exxon, the US Southern Command, and the president of Guyana with a people’s vote,” Maduro said during a broadcast of his weekly television program on November 20.
Guyana correctly fears that the referendum is be a pretext for a land grab, and has appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt the referendum — a move that Caracas has rejected, though its claim to the land is largely internationally unrecognised.
It isn't: on Friday, judges at the World Court on Friday ordered Venezuela to refrain from taking any action that would alter the situation on the ground. The court did not expressly forbid Venezuela to hold a planned Dec. 3 referendum over its rights to the region around the Esequibo river, the subject of the long-running border dispute, as Guyana has requested. However, judges at the International Court of Justice - as the World Court is formally known - made clear that any concrete action to alter the status quo should be stopped.
"The court observes that the situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute is that Guyana administers and exercises control over that area," presiding judge Joan Donoghue said. "Venezuela must refrain from taking any action which would modify that situation," she added
“This is a textbook example of annexation,” Paul Reichler, a US lawyer representing Guyana before the ICJ, said in The Hague last month, claiming that Venezuela was preparing a military build-up in the Essequibo region in case it wished to enforce the outcome of the referendum.
For its part, Caracas said that its troops were carrying out anti-illegal mining operations near the territory, a sparsely populated region that is home to about 200,000 Guyanese who speak English and indigenous languages, though little Spanish.
Meanwhile in pro-Maduro Brazil, local media reported that a senator for the state of Roraima said the defense minister had agreed to his requests for military reinforcements in the municipality of Pacaraima, a strategic location for access to Essequibo. The defence ministry said: “Defence actions have been intensified in the northern border region of the country, promoting a greater military presence.” It wasn't immediately clear if Brazil's socialist leader Lula is planning on aiding his comrade Maduro in invading and pillaging Guyana's oil, but it would be par for the socialist course, especially when the US president is implicitly approving your actions.
That said, analysts question whether Venezuela will genuinely seek to annex the territory. They argue the referendum exercise is aimed at bolstering Maduro’s domestic support ahead of elections that Venezuela agreed to hold in exchange for relief from debilitating sanctions imposed by the US.
“Political calculations are driving Maduro to escalate tensions in an attempt to stir up nationalist sentiment, but those same political calculations also limit his military options,” said Theodore Kahn, director for the Andean region at the consultancy Control Risks.
“An actual invasion would shut the door to further negotiations with the US and force the Biden administration to reimpose oil sector sanctions.”
Come to think of it, that's a joke of a deterrent, considering Maduro had no problem living with sanctions for years. If Maduro were to get his grubby hands on some of the most state of the art oil facilities in the world - as a reminder, Guyana is where Exxon has invested billions to extract much of the country's oil- he would do so in a heartbeat.
Still, Maduro needs to mobilise party loyalists to defend two decades of socialist rule during which his party and its predecessors have turned Caracas into an international pariah, shattered its state-run oil industry, fueled mass emigration and empowered violent gangs.
Luis Vicente León, who runs Caracas-based research company Datanálisis, said the government was using the referendum to reduce the perceived impact of a pre-election primary held by the opposition in October despite government disapproval. The primary drew 2.4mn voters to the polls, well above expectations.
“It’s also a test of the government’s capacity to engage its political machinery and mobilise voters,” León said. “Alongside that, it pressures the opposition to take a position on a sensitive subject and gives [Maduro] a potential excuse to declare a state of emergency and avoid the election altogether.”
Maduro, in office since his firebrand predecessor Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013, has yet to officially announce his candidacy in the upcoming elections. However, he is widely expected to run despite approval ratings of just 20 per cent, according to Datanálisis, amid an economic and humanitarian crisis.
Hilarious, Maduro’s re-election in 2018 was regarded by the US and its allies as fraudulent, but so much has changed since then, well not that much: just Biden becoming president and folding to Maduro's demands in exchange for oil. Seeking to entice him into allowing a “free and fair” election this time (please don't laugh) the US last month relaxed sanctions on oil, gold and secondary financial markets for six months. The move followed a deal between Maduro and a US-backed faction of the opposition to resume political talks.
Yet hopes of a political opening were tempered when just days later, the government-backed Supreme Justice Tribunal suspended the results of the opposition primary, which was convincingly won by María Corina Machado.
Machado, a pro-market former lawmaker who once called for external military intervention in Venezuela, is banned from holding office at present, something she claims will not stop her from running.
While the government and the fractious opposition agree that the Essequibo region is part of Venezuela’s territory, Machado has said the referendum is a “distraction” that must be suspended. She advocates settling the dispute at the ICJ.
The referendum will put five questions to Venezuela’s public. One seeks approval for granting all residents of the Essequibo region Venezuelan citizenship and creating a new state within Venezuela, while another asks voters if they recognise the jurisdiction of the ICJ to rule on the matter. Both would likely lead to a military invasion.
In April, the ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to decide on the territorial dispute, following a request from Guyana in 2018 to confirm the border that was drawn in arbitration in 1899 between Venezuela and what was then British Guiana, a colony. A final ruling could take years, however.
“It is not an exaggeration to describe the current threat to Guyana as existential and the need for provisional measures as urgent,” Carl Greenidge, who leads Guyana’s delegation at the ICJ, told judges in The Hague with reference to the referendum.
A specialised US army delegation visited Guyana this week, and discussed “processes to enhance both countries’ military readiness and capabilities to respond to security threats,” said the US embassy in Georgetown. Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana’s vice-president, said last week that “all the options available for us to defend our country will be pursued. Every option.”
Caracas has long held that the Essequibo river to the region’s east is its natural border, as it was during Spanish rule before 1899. But Venezuela’s interest in pressing that claim has fluctuated. In 2004, while seeking international support for his Bolivarian revolution, Chávez said in Guyana that Georgetown had the right to grant concessions in the Essequibo territory.
But since 2015, when ExxonMobil announced it had found oil beneath the waters off the Essequibo coast in the Stabroek Block, Caracas has adopted a more bellicose tone (well, of course).
In October this year, the US major — which leads a consortium producing oil in the South American country — made another find in the waters claimed by Venezuela. Drilling bids were awarded to companies including Exxon, French major Total, and local company Sispro. Francisco Monaldi, a Latin America energy expert at Rice University in Houston, said: “So far Exxon’s wells and discoveries are in the area north of Guyana’s undisputed land territory, but the awarded oil blocks do go into the disputed waters.”
Oil is transforming the Guyanese economy, which grew 62 per cent last year, according to the IMF, and is projected to expand another 37 per cent this year. With around 11bn barrels in reserves and a population of just 800,000, the country has the largest amount of oil per capita in the world.
Meanwhile, Venezuela has the world’s largest proven reserves, and in its heyday at the turn of the century pumped about 3mn barrels per day, but mismanagement, corruption and sanctions led production to collapse. In September this year, it pumped 735,000 bpd.
Exxon said that “border issues are for governments and appropriate international organisations to address”.
Still, we wouldn't be surprised if Darren Woods is quietly putting together a mercenary army to quietly take out Maduro. It should cost him at most 2-3 days worth of oil extraction revenues.
Автоматски споено мислење:
Brazil increases northern border military presence amid Venezuela-Guyana spat -ministry
Brazil "has intensified defensive actions" along its northern border as it monitors a territorial dispute between its neighbors, Guyana and Venezuela, the country's defense ministry said on Wednesday.
www.reuters.com
Eisenhorn
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Venezuelans approve takeover of oil-rich region of Guyana.
Vanlok
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Vanlok
deus ex machina
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Vanlok
deus ex machina
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Would the U.S. Intervene to Defend Guyana's Oil Riches? | OilPrice.com
The resurgence of the Venezuela-Guyana border dispute, driven in part by energy discoveries, could present a geopolitical opportunity for major powers in the region.
oilprice.com
Would the U.S. Intervene to Defend Guyana's Oil Riches?
By Gregory R. Copley - Dec 14, 2023, 12:00 PM CST
- The escalating Venezuela-Guyana dispute could provide an opportunity for the AUKUS alliance to intervene in the region and counter the influence of China, Russia, and Iran.
- US Southern Command has conducted joint operations with the Guyana Defense Forces and the U.S. has said it would support Guyana’s sovereignty.
- Geopolitical maneuvering by China, Iran, and Russia has fueled tensions in the region, and with a presidential election looming in Venezuela, the stakes are only getting higher.
The territorial dispute over the Essequibo region of Guyana extends back to 1840, ostensibly resolved with the Paris Arbitral Award of 1899, but was revived with the discovery of massive energy reserves off its coast in the early 21“ Century.
This was exacerbated by Venezuela and its allies in 2022-23 for a variety of reasons, and in ways that broke with years of bilateral and multilateral agreements and negotiations between the two states.
The US Southern Command has the new dispute on its radar, and the UK Government and the Commonwealth have been stirred into action. Southern Command, as of early December 2023, had begun conducting joint flight operations with the Guyana Defense Forces, sending a message to Venezuela. And US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Guyana Pres. Mohamed Irfaan Ali that the US would support “Guyana's sovereignty and our robust security and economic cooperation”.
Venezuelan Pres. Nicolas Maduro criticized Guyana for involving the United States, even knowing this was an inevitable consequence of the Venezuelan military build-up on Guyana's border.
As well, several major US energy corporations have a stake in the outcome, given their participation in one of the largest new petroleum fields in the world.
And yet it is Beijing and Tehran that have worked with the Venezuelan Government to escalate the crisis to the point of conflict in order to pull US forces away from build-ups in the Indo-Pacific which challenge, separately, the PRC's People's Liberation Army (PLA) expansion, and Iran's security as Israel and the US move against Iranian military adventurism.
The PRC has for the past few years worked consistently to keep US and UK forces locked into the Euro-Atlantic, and has benefited from the Russia-Ukraine war, the Hamas-Israel war, and the feints of PRC basing in the Atlantic, along with attempts to push Argentina into threatening war again over the Falkland Islands.
The prospect of US and UK military engagement to support Guyana is real, and while it does indeed promise to keep their forces out of the Pacific —to the benefit of the PRC — it also offers a chance for the UK to demonstrate its commitment to a Commonwealth ally and for the US, in particular, to clear the PRC's influence out of the Caribbean basin, where it has become pervasive. It could also be a test of the AUKUS alliance in that Australia would need to show that it is as committed to the Alliance's interests outside the Indo-Pacific as well as in it and that it recognized that the alliance's conflict with the PRC was, indeed, global.
The sudden re-emergence of the prospect of imminent military conflict, then, between Venezuela and neighboring Guyana is more a reflection of the broader strategies of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Iran, rather than a reflection of the 1899 Paris Arbitral Award it claims to be. Yes, there is a genuine component of Venezuelan nationalism and competition for territory now that Guyana's on and gas reserves in the disputed region are known to be among the most significant in the world.
The fact that Venezuela faces a Presidential election in 2024 is also significant and requires Pres. Maduro campaigned on nationalist lines and the promise that the new energy coveries would revive the economy. But Venezuelans know that the extensive national energy reserves — largely heavy petroleum rather than the light crude of the new Guyana deposits — have been poorly managed by the Maduro Government and have yielded little to the Venezuelan voters.
Venezuela, even by its Central Bank estimates, has inflation running at more than 280 percent a year in 2023, although that figure understates the real hollowing of the national economy.
In the midst of all this, Guyana Pres. Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Venezuela Pres. Nicolàs Maduro on December 10, 2023, agreed to meet in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on December 14, 2023, to discuss the issue of the disputed territory in the Essequibo region — after considerable pressure from Brazil, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). The matter is already before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and Pres. Irfaan Ali (People's Progressive Party/Civic) said that he would abide by the ICJ ruling and that he would not succumb to threats from Venezuela.
Pres. Irfaan Ali, on December 12, 2023, wrote to Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, to firmly outline the discussions set to take place in Kingstown, St. Vincent, in which the Guyana President expected that CARICOM would stand by its support for Guyana, and reiterating that the talks would not be about a resolution of the border claims by Venezuela, noting that these had already been arbitrated, and that there was no valid dispute over the offshore territorial waters of Guyana, referencing the Stabroek Block, some 120 miles offshore Guyana (and therefore within its exclusive economic zone/EEZ).
The issues of the actual case, however, are secondary to the global geopolitical reality that both the PRC and Iran have been seeking to remove US and Western military pressures on them. The PRC has been seeking to keep the US, in particular, engaged in the Euro-Atlantic space and unable to deploy forces to the Indo-Pacific, and has thus supported the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and HAMAS, and has attempted to prod Argentina into reviving a military threat to Britain's continued possession of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.
In the Venezuela-Guyana context, the PRC and Iran, along with Russia, are the primary allies of Venezuela, and have been clearly preparing for some time to push the Guyana land claim to the point of conflict, including the postulated Venezuelan military invasion of the Essequibo region of Guyana. Venezuelan troops are already deployed on the border of the 159,500 sq.km (61,600 sq.mi). Essequibo region, which is on the western bank of the Essequibo River, splits Guyana.
It is in the offshore territorial waters and economic zone which relate to the Essequibo region that US oil producer ExxonMobil has discovered 11.4-bn barrels of oil in the area since 2015, making it one of the largest finds of the 21st Century. The oilfields of the offshore Stabroek block produce over 500,000 barrels daily. And ExxonMobil is just one of the petroleum companies exploiting the Guyanese oilfields off Essequibo. Exxon owns 45 percent of Stabroek; Hess, which Chevron is buying, owns another 35 percent; the PRC's CNOOC holds the remaining 20 percent.
The PRC would fare well, possibly better than now, if the Essequibo landgrab (and seagrab) was successful for Venezuela, but the US companies would be at risk. Logically, then, the US Government would be seen to be forced to defend Guyana's position, if only in order to protect US economic interests.
Venezuela itself has more than 300 billion barrels of oil reserves, but this is now dwarfed by its previously insignificant neighbor. Venezuelan State oil company PDVSA theoretically has the expertise to exploit the Stabroek block, but would need investment. Its nationalization of the energy industry has also meant that its energy management has become a political tool, generating funds for the military by not the nation. Venezuela could count on some expertise coming from U.S. oil companies, such as Chevron itself which operates with PDVSA, exporting an average of 124,000 barrels per day from Venezuela.
So the situation becomes complex.
In Venezuela’s 2024 Presidential election, Maduro was slated to compete with Maria Corina Machado, an economic conservative and member of the opposition party in the Venezuelan National Assembly. But Machado has been disqualified from holding public office because of her support for U.S. sanctions against the Maduro Government. The U.S. Government has said that sanctions would not be lifted unless the opposition parties could participate in elections.
While Maduro’s election victory would be seen as hollow if there was no credible opposition candidate, it is questionable whether the PRC, Russia, and Iran would be disheartened if Maduro resisted U.S. sanctions threats. They (and Caracas) anticipate that Venezuela would, in the future, be able to trade within the new trading bloc outside the U.S. dollar zone, and as part of the enlarged BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group.
The growth of the non-dollar trading bloc has been largely a result of national leaders wanting to remain outside the threat of U.S. sanctions, a trend that has largely seen the end of the efficacy of sanctions as a viable weapon in U.S. strategic warfare.
devilko
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Guyana, Venezuela agree to not use force or escalate tensions in Esequibo dispute
Vanlok
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UK Deploys Warship To Guyana In Show Of Support Against Venezuela Territorial Claim
Britain’s decision to dispatch HMS Trent later this month is a significant show of support for the government in Guyana’s capital Georgetown.
Britain’s decision to dispatch HMS Trent later this month is a significant show of support for the government in Guyana’s capital Georgetown.
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Venezuela Deploys Tanks, Armored Carriers To Guyana Border
After constant jawboning for over two months, Venezuela is now backing up its threats to annex part of oil-rich Guyana and secure access to some of the world’s largest oil deposits by "moving light tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats and armored carriers to the two countries’ border", the WSJ reported noting that this is set to rapidly turn into a new security headache for the administration of the now officially senile US president.
The deployment, which was visible in satellite images made public Friday and in videos recently posted by Venezuela’s military on social media, is a "major escalation" in Caracas’s attempts to obtain some leverage over its neighbor’s newfound energy reserves, even though any military confrontation will result in an international response that promptly ousts Maduro. It comes despite a written agreement reached in December between the Venezuelan dictator and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali that denounced the use of force and called for a commission to address territorial disputes.
According to the WSJ, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, using satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies and shared exclusively with the Journal, found that in late 2023 and January Venezuela moved armored vehicles and what appear to be light tanks to Anacoco Island on the Cuyuni River just yards from Guyana. Construction work is also taking place, signaling the expansion of a base there.
In Venezuela’s Atlantic port of Güiria, the country deployed between Jan. 18 and Jan. 22 at least three Iranian-made Peykaap III antiship guided-missile patrol boats, as is visible in the satellite images used by CSIS, the Washington think tank. The regime’s military set up two Russian-built Buk M2E antiaircraft systems in Güiria on Jan. 31, almost 400 miles east of their usual position near Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. And a small coast-guard post in Punta Barima, 50 miles from Guyana-controlled Essequibo, is being revamped into a naval and air base.
Those deployments are within easy reach of the Stabroek oil block run by Exxon and its partners, Chevron
and China’s Cnooc, off the coast of Guyana, where production has soared to 645,000 barrels of crude a day, not far off what Venezuela produces.
The deployment and increasingly bellicose language from Caracas has come as Guyana emerges as one of the world’s hottest energy frontiers following offshore oil discoveries by an Exxon Mobil-led consortium. The former British colony, population 800,000, has a defense force of only 3,000 service members, pushing the government to work more closely with the U.S. to enhance its defensive capabilities.
Confirmation of the military deployment comes one day after Venezuela said it would respond in a “forceful” way to Exxon’s plans to drill in the disputed Essequibo region off the coast of Guyana.
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said that Exxon’s plan to drill exploration wells in the region will be met with a “proportional, forceful and rightful response,” according to a post on social-media platform X. Padrino said the area is a “maritime space that rightfully belongs to Venezuela.”
The oil giant said it will drill new wells west of the Liza discovery and close to Venezuelan territorial waters, Exxon Guyana President Alistair Routledge told Demerara Waves. The dispute is “not inhibiting that activity in our plans,” he said.
A Venezuelan frigate with the inscription ‘Essequibo is ours’ conducting military exercises in disputed waters in December
Padrino responded that “If ExxonMobil has a private security company represented by the Southern Command and a small branch in the government of Guyana, good for them, but in the maritime space that rightfully belongs to Venezuela, they will receive a proportional, forceful and rightful response." Well, Exxon may not have a security company now, but it has billions of dollars more than Venezuela does and if it has to hire a mercenary army to defeat the banana republic's advances, it can easily do so.
Since late last year, the Venezuelan government, which has an army of up to 150,000 active soldiers has ratcheted up claims to the Essequibo, a mostly jungle-covered region that makes up two-thirds of Guyana.
“We are not surprised by the bad faith of Venezuela,” Guyana’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal in response to questions about the military deployment. “We are disappointed, not surprised.”
What is amusing is that the war-footing comes just as the senile occupant of the White House has been making overtures to Venezuela's dictator in hopes that Maduro will flood the US with cheap oil, thus keeping gas prices low ahead of the elections, which has fast emerged as Biden's only chance of winning; needless to say, should oil prices spike, Biden is done. It gets even funnier though, because while on one hand Maduro has been maintaining a dialog with the US due to his leverage over Biden, at the same time, the country has said it is boosting its defenses in response to the U.S. military’s exercises in Guyana in December and the U.K.’s deployment of a small antinarcotics vessel, the HMS Trent, in Guyanese waters.
In recent months, U.S. officials from the Defense Department and White House have visited Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, for talks on increasing cooperation. President Ali said his government would soon purchase American helicopters, drones and other defense equipment.
“Supporting Guyana to strengthen its defensive capability as it continues to bring enormous oil windfall on the market is something we have a direct interest in,” Juan Gonzalez, a senior Biden adviser, told reporters in Colombia on Monday, a day after meeting Guyana’s president in Georgetown. “We certainly don’t want to escalate tensions, but we have our own strategic relationship with Guyana.”
Guyanese soldiers participated in joint military exercises with U.S. Southern Command troops at Camp Stephenson in Guyana last year
Then again, Biden's dementia is so bad - as the entire world saw in the past 24 hours - it wouldn't surprise us if the US president is so confused he sends US troops to help his BFF Maduro to run over Guayana if it means oil will be a few cents cheaper come November.
www.zerohedge.com
After constant jawboning for over two months, Venezuela is now backing up its threats to annex part of oil-rich Guyana and secure access to some of the world’s largest oil deposits by "moving light tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats and armored carriers to the two countries’ border", the WSJ reported noting that this is set to rapidly turn into a new security headache for the administration of the now officially senile US president.
The deployment, which was visible in satellite images made public Friday and in videos recently posted by Venezuela’s military on social media, is a "major escalation" in Caracas’s attempts to obtain some leverage over its neighbor’s newfound energy reserves, even though any military confrontation will result in an international response that promptly ousts Maduro. It comes despite a written agreement reached in December between the Venezuelan dictator and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali that denounced the use of force and called for a commission to address territorial disputes.
According to the WSJ, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, using satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies and shared exclusively with the Journal, found that in late 2023 and January Venezuela moved armored vehicles and what appear to be light tanks to Anacoco Island on the Cuyuni River just yards from Guyana. Construction work is also taking place, signaling the expansion of a base there.
In Venezuela’s Atlantic port of Güiria, the country deployed between Jan. 18 and Jan. 22 at least three Iranian-made Peykaap III antiship guided-missile patrol boats, as is visible in the satellite images used by CSIS, the Washington think tank. The regime’s military set up two Russian-built Buk M2E antiaircraft systems in Güiria on Jan. 31, almost 400 miles east of their usual position near Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. And a small coast-guard post in Punta Barima, 50 miles from Guyana-controlled Essequibo, is being revamped into a naval and air base.
Those deployments are within easy reach of the Stabroek oil block run by Exxon and its partners, Chevron
and China’s Cnooc, off the coast of Guyana, where production has soared to 645,000 barrels of crude a day, not far off what Venezuela produces.
The deployment and increasingly bellicose language from Caracas has come as Guyana emerges as one of the world’s hottest energy frontiers following offshore oil discoveries by an Exxon Mobil-led consortium. The former British colony, population 800,000, has a defense force of only 3,000 service members, pushing the government to work more closely with the U.S. to enhance its defensive capabilities.
Confirmation of the military deployment comes one day after Venezuela said it would respond in a “forceful” way to Exxon’s plans to drill in the disputed Essequibo region off the coast of Guyana.
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said that Exxon’s plan to drill exploration wells in the region will be met with a “proportional, forceful and rightful response,” according to a post on social-media platform X. Padrino said the area is a “maritime space that rightfully belongs to Venezuela.”
The oil giant said it will drill new wells west of the Liza discovery and close to Venezuelan territorial waters, Exxon Guyana President Alistair Routledge told Demerara Waves. The dispute is “not inhibiting that activity in our plans,” he said.
A Venezuelan frigate with the inscription ‘Essequibo is ours’ conducting military exercises in disputed waters in DecemberPadrino responded that “If ExxonMobil has a private security company represented by the Southern Command and a small branch in the government of Guyana, good for them, but in the maritime space that rightfully belongs to Venezuela, they will receive a proportional, forceful and rightful response." Well, Exxon may not have a security company now, but it has billions of dollars more than Venezuela does and if it has to hire a mercenary army to defeat the banana republic's advances, it can easily do so.
Since late last year, the Venezuelan government, which has an army of up to 150,000 active soldiers has ratcheted up claims to the Essequibo, a mostly jungle-covered region that makes up two-thirds of Guyana.
“We are not surprised by the bad faith of Venezuela,” Guyana’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal in response to questions about the military deployment. “We are disappointed, not surprised.”
What is amusing is that the war-footing comes just as the senile occupant of the White House has been making overtures to Venezuela's dictator in hopes that Maduro will flood the US with cheap oil, thus keeping gas prices low ahead of the elections, which has fast emerged as Biden's only chance of winning; needless to say, should oil prices spike, Biden is done. It gets even funnier though, because while on one hand Maduro has been maintaining a dialog with the US due to his leverage over Biden, at the same time, the country has said it is boosting its defenses in response to the U.S. military’s exercises in Guyana in December and the U.K.’s deployment of a small antinarcotics vessel, the HMS Trent, in Guyanese waters.
In recent months, U.S. officials from the Defense Department and White House have visited Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, for talks on increasing cooperation. President Ali said his government would soon purchase American helicopters, drones and other defense equipment.
“Supporting Guyana to strengthen its defensive capability as it continues to bring enormous oil windfall on the market is something we have a direct interest in,” Juan Gonzalez, a senior Biden adviser, told reporters in Colombia on Monday, a day after meeting Guyana’s president in Georgetown. “We certainly don’t want to escalate tensions, but we have our own strategic relationship with Guyana.”
Guyanese soldiers participated in joint military exercises with U.S. Southern Command troops at Camp Stephenson in Guyana last yearThen again, Biden's dementia is so bad - as the entire world saw in the past 24 hours - it wouldn't surprise us if the US president is so confused he sends US troops to help his BFF Maduro to run over Guayana if it means oil will be a few cents cheaper come November.
Venezuela Deploys Tanks, Armored Carriers To Guyana Border | ZeroHedge
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The Venezuelan military has established a military base, close to the border with the de facto annexed Esequiba region of Guyana
New military reinforcement has been sent to the disputed border area.
The Venezuelan army announced: "We move forward while we interconnect the integral defense sectors of our Guayana Esequiba!"
A military escalation is highly likely.
New military reinforcement has been sent to the disputed border area.
The Venezuelan army announced: "We move forward while we interconnect the integral defense sectors of our Guayana Esequiba!"
A military escalation is highly likely.