After Venezuela’s saber rattling
Crisis summit with Maduro and Ali announced
December 10, 2023, 12:24 a.m
After significant oil discoveries off the coast of Guyana, an old border dispute with neighboring Venezuela flares up again. The regional power is asking its own population whether a region of Guyana should not belong to its own territory. After massive tensions, arbitration should now take place.
The presidents of Venezuela and Guyana, Nicolás Maduro and Irfaan Ali, will meet on Thursday for a summit over their border dispute. The meeting will take place in the island state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said the head of government there, Ralph Gonsalves. Caracas claims the oil-rich Essequibo region, which has been part of Guyana for more than a century, as its own. Experts currently believe that a real invasion is unlikely and speculate that Maduro is making domestic political maneuvers before an election. Nevertheless, Guyana, which is militarily weaker, feels strongly threatened.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is also expected to take part in the meeting now scheduled, as Gonsalves explained in his capacity as acting President of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac). Several South American countries had called on Venezuela and Guyana to resolve the dispute peacefully. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru warned in a joint statement against “unilateral actions” that could “lead to additional tensions.”
Around 125,000 of the 800,000 Guyanese live in the Essequibo region, which makes up around two thirds of Guyanese territory. Guyana points out that the current border was established by an arbitration court in 1899. Venezuela, on the other hand, claims that the Essequibo River in the east of the region forms a natural border that was recognized as early as 1777.
Caracas’ desires increased especially after the oil company ExxonMobil discovered an oil deposit in the area in 2015. Another significant oil discovery was made in the region in October, increasing Guyana’s reserves to at least 10 billion barrels – more than those of oil-rich Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates.
More than 10.4 million of 20.7 million Venezuelans eligible to vote voted in favor of Venezuela’s claim to Essequibo in a non-binding referendum a week ago. Shortly afterwards, President Maduro called for the area to be declared a Venezuelan province by law and for oil production licenses to be issued.