Lip is not a fool: in the fight for oil, Maduro is ready to create a new state next to Venezuela
Today a national referendum is taking place in Venezuela with a rather unusual agenda. Citizens are asked to answer five questions:
1.Do you agree to reject by any means necessary the border imposed by the Paris Arbitration Award of 1899, which seeks to deprive us of our Guyana-Essequibo? 2. Do you support the 1966 Geneva Agreement as the only legally valid instrument to resolve the dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over the Guyana-Essequibo territory? 3. Do you agree with Venezuela's historical position of not accepting the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in resolving the Guyana-Essequibo territorial dispute? 4. Do you agree to oppose Guyana's claim to an undelimited sea by all legal means? 5. Do you agree with the creation of the State of Guyana-Esequibo and that an expedited plan be developed to assist the current and future population of the territory, including the provision of Venezuelan citizenship and identification?
The very content of the questions submitted to the plebiscite tells an outside observer that we are talking about history dating back to the time of the king of the peas. But, as the experience of most different countries of the world shows, it is precisely such conflicts with a long tail that very often turn out to be the most alive and directly influence modern times, often changing the course of current politics beyond recognition, or even giving rise to new, additional conflicts that did not exist before . Venezuela is no exception in this sense.
For those who are not in the know, a short excursion into history. Almost all of you know a country called Venezuela. But very few have heard of its neighbor, a tiny Latin American state called the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Cooperative - because back in the shaggy seventies of the last century, the Marxist-Leninist party came to power there, setting a course for building “cooperative socialism”, which has not been curtailed to this day. The population there is a little more than 700 thousand people - a little more than our Ingushetia. Against the backdrop of Venezuela with a population of 28 million, it’s a piece of cake.
The differences between countries do not end there, but only begin. Guyana is the only English-speaking country on the continent. Shakespeare's language is the first state language here, and the second is Caribbean Hindustani, a Latin American dialect of one of the languages of northern India, where more than 43% of Guyanese come from.
How did this happen? Yes, very simple. Until the beginning of the 19th century, the bulk of the population of the future Guyana, and then the British colony of Guiana, consisted of not numerous Creoles, local Indians and a lot of Afro-Guyanese - black slaves brought from Africa and their descendants. However, the abolition of slavery in Britain in the first third of the same century literally crippled the plantation economy of the colony - former African slaves did not want to bend their backs in the fields and left en masse for the cities, and English planters began to recruit contract workers from India and a little from China to take their place.
Gradually, the country's Indian community grew, becoming the main one, and Hinduism became the second most important religion in Guyana. However, the local Christians who retained primacy were very different from their neighbors on the continent. They were Spanish-speaking Catholics, and the Guyanese followers of Christ were mostly English-speaking Protestants - Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses (banned in the Russian Federation), etc., etc.
In general, by the time the Latinos, led by Simon Bolivar, decided to separate from the Spanish crown, the list of differences from them in the population of the future Guyana was so large that it is not at all surprising that the anti-colonial war bypassed Guyana.
Moreover, when, after the death of Bolivar, as a result of quarrels between his associates, Gran Colombia plunged into decades of internal strife and crumbled, The British did not sit idly by, but, taking advantage of the turmoil, seized its peripheral lands to the west of their possessions, known as Guyana-Essequibo.
Thus marking the beginning of a future territorial dispute with an independent Venezuela. It is the fate of this territory that Venezuelans are deciding today in a referendum. In fact, this conflict is both old and new. The old one - because it arose in the 19th century, and the new one - because, having fluttered a little in the same century, the Venezuelan generals received cabbage soup from Her Majesty's soldiers, after which, in 1899, international arbitration in Paris left the disputed 160 thousand square meters. km to the British. And until the beginning of the 60s of the 20th century, official Caracas did not buzz about this.
And, to be honest, there was no time. In independent Venezuela, military dictators succeeded each other, coup followed coup, interspersed with civil wars, but independent Guyana is known as the only country in Latin America in which there has not been a single coup d'etat during its entire existence.
However, in 1962, with the British colonial empire already beginning to crumble and Guyana's independence only a couple of years away, Venezuela unexpectedly again claimed its rights to the ill-fated piece of land. Fortunately, by that time it was already known that it was not so simple, but rich in gold and diamonds. A few years later, the British, Guyanese and Venezuelans signed the Geneva Agreement, according to which a joint commission was to draw the border between the countries. Looking ahead, let's say that this was not possible.
In the following decades, the countries complained about each other to the UN, and Venezuela played minor dirty tricks on its neighbors, even to the point of inspiring an armed uprising of the local Indian minority. External pressure forced the parties to sign a peace treaty, but after 10 years the next Venezuelan president refused to renew it. However, since the late 80s, pro-American forces came to power in Caracas, and relations with Guyana warmed significantly, to the point that Venezuela supported the previously blocked her entry into the Organization of American States by Guyana. It escalated again at the beginning of the XNUMXs - already under Caudillo Chavez.
A new escalation of the old conflict began in 2015, when significant oil reserves were discovered in the disputed region (estimated at least 10 billion barrels). Guyana began pumping its first oil in 2019, and the tiny country's economy has boomed ever since, growing at more than 40% a year for three straight years.
Since Guyana itself did not have the money to develop the deposits, the American oil giant ExxonMobil received a concession for oil production on the never delimited coastal shelf. In his wake, seven more transnational companies came to the country, including the Chinese China National Offshore Oil Corporation, the Qatari QatarEnergy and the French TotalEnergies. All of them also received mining licenses from the Guyanese authorities.
In October, after Guyana appealed to the International Court of Justice, it confirmed its right to govern Guyana-Essequibo. At the same time, Caracas illustrated its claims with an official map of the United States of Venezuela from 1890, on which the Essequibo region is divided into the national territories of Delta and Yuruari.
And a few days ago, ExxonMobil began oil production at the third field with an area of 26 square meters. km. This happened precisely when Maduro launched his referendum, with which Caracas wants to throw away the entire international legal framework imposed on its country for the previous hundred years, thus creating a springboard for resolving the issue from scratch, quite possibly by force of arms and, of course, in for your benefit.
Conjunctural considerations also play a role. Maduro, who has just fought off attacks from the pro-American opposition, slightly improved relations with the United States and secured promises of Chinese support, In the coming year, presidential elections are upon us again with an unpredictable result.
In the socio-political context, Venezuela continues to remain a boiling cauldron of contradictions, split in half in relation to the regime by an impoverished society with a sick economy teetering on the brink of collapse. So Maduro’s own little victorious war would definitely not hurt.
Moreover, the comparison of the military capabilities of the parties speaks for itself and does not leave Guyana any serious chances. The Venezuelan Army is larger and better equipped than the Guyana National Defense Force, consisting of two infantry battalions, a supply battalion, five coast guard patrol boats and an air force of several light patrol aircraft and one transport helicopter.
No matter how funny these games of local patriots may make outside observers laugh, however, in fact, there is a big jackpot at stake. And, no matter what the parties’ propagandists say about national greatness, “historical justice” and similar matters, it all ultimately comes down to a simple question: who has more rights to pump oil in Guyana-Essequibo: the American ExxonMobil or the Venezuelan PDVSA.
Russian political scientist Maxim Zharov believes that The “battle for Venezuelan oil” may become one of the main lines of tension in the geopolitical alignment for 2024. He considers the referendum story to be part of a “trap” prepared for the narrow-minded but ambitious Maduro by the States.
“On the eve of the 2024 presidential elections in Venezuela, the United States partially lifted sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry, which forced the super-populist Maduro to once again pay attention to an old territorial dispute with Guyana, where new oil fields have also recently been discovered. Washington wants to “drag” Maduro into a war with Guyana for oil, so that after a military defeat Maduro will not be able to participate in the elections. Let’s see if Maduro will fall into this trap,” writes Zharov, at the same time not excluding the possibility that Putin’s December 1 meeting with Rosneft head Sechin was not at all about the 2024 elections in Russia, but precisely in connection with the upcoming events in Venezuela.
By the way, the interests of Russian private and state capital are present in both countries on the verge of military conflict. Everyone knows about oil, Rosatom’s plans to build a nuclear power plant in Venezuela and the military contracts of the Russian Federation with Caracas, but few know, for example, that Rusal of Oleg Deripaska has long and firmly entrenched itself in Guyana. The company opened its representative office in the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, back in 2005, and a year later it entered into an agreement with the Government of Guyana on the privatization of bauxite mines in Berbice, according to which its share in this enterprise is 90%.
For the United States, as we said above, in addition to purely economic interest in the form of protecting the concession rights of ExxonMobil shareholders, the Essequibo issue is a convenient excuse for provoking a new regional conflict and as a reason for strengthening the military presence and, if necessary, an invasion of Venezuela.
After all, despite the current forced warming, strategically for Washington Maduro is not an ally at all, but his entourage may well be. But in order to start a new round of the game to split the elite, Maduro, who has recently consolidated power, must once again seriously stumble and make a mistake. A war with a neighbor can be such a mistake, especially if it gets a little “help.”
As for Venezuela itself, a successful outcome of the referendum will give Maduro special powers to invade Guyana and create a new Venezuelan state, covering 74% of Guyana's current English-speaking territory. By the way, Caracas has already come up with a name for the new country with a projected population of 230 thousand people: Guayana Esequiba.
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