The US Navy may need to patrol
sovereign waters of Guyana to protect US commercial rights from Venezuelan
abuse. Venezuela Invades Guyana to Block
Exxon Mobil Oil Exploration, by Frances Martel, 12/24/18, Breitbart. The Venezuelan Navy illegally
entered the waters of Guyana this weekend and forced a ship contracted by Exxon
Mobil to conduct oil research in the area to vacate, claiming that Guyana’s
permission to explore its sovereign territory was not enough for the ship to be
legally present in the water.
The incident, which
Guyanese authorities angrily denounced and vowed to bring to the attention of
the United Nations, reignites a feud Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás
Maduro began with the neighboring country in 2015, claiming as much as two-thirds of Guyana
itself belonged to Venezuela.
Guyana has repeatedly
noted that Venezuela signed an agreement in 1899 on the territory in question
and no disputes remain as to who owns that land.
Exxon Mobil made
its first of ten major oil discoveries in Guyana in
2015, triggering Maduro’s claims to the territory. Despite being an OPEC member
nation and home to one of the world’s largest known oil reserves,
Venezuela has been forced to import hundreds of thousands of gallons of refined
oil because the socialist state nationalized the nation’s major oil
corporations and has replaced experts at Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the
state-run oil company, with Maduro cronies of limited experience in the oil
industry.
Reuters identified the vessel intercepted as the Ramform Tethys
of Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), a contractor working on behalf of Exxon
Mobil researching seismic activity in the region. Only Venezuela identifies the
waters where the incident occurred on Saturday as exclusively Venezuelan; they
are Guyanese waters by international law.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry
nonetheless justified its actions in a statement
this weekend, explaining that a Venezuelan navy ship “engaging in its customary
patrols in the Venezuelan waters of the Atlantic … identified the unauthorized
presence in Venezuelan territorial waters of two seismic exploration ships.”
The statement described the Guyanese waters as “within the indisputable
sovereignty of Venezuela.”
“Before this flagrant violation of
sovereignty, [the Navy] applied proper international protocol for these
incidents and safeguarded the sovereignty of the nation with strict adherence
to international agreements and treaties,” the Venezuelan government statement continued.
According to Reuters, the Navy
approached the exploration ships and questioned their presence in the area. The
crew onboard explained that they were in sovereign Guyanese waters and had the
permission of the government of Guyana to be there, which the Venezuelan
soldiers claimed was not enough.
“It is important to note that … those
onboard argued that they had a permit from the Republic of Guyana to operate in
this maritime space,” the Venezuelan statement read. “They were informed that
this country does not have sovereignty in any of the maritime territory of the
Orinoco [River] Delta, which led them to navigate away.”
In its own statement released Sunday,
the government of Guyana expressed outrage at the Venezuelan
government invading its territory and said it would bring a complaint before
the United Nations.
The incident “shows the true threat to
economic development of the country posed by its western neighbor,” accusing
Venezuela of “violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our
country.” “Guyana rejects this illegal,
aggressive and hostile act,” the statement asserted.
The U.S. State Department weighed in
Sunday in defense of Exxon Mobil and of the sovereignty of Guyana.
“We underscore that Guyana has the
sovereign right to explore and exploit resources in its Exclusive Economic Zone. We call on Venezuela to respect
international law and the rights of its neighbors,” the short statement read in
part.
The incident is the first in years to
reignite tensions over a territory called the Essequibo, a sparsely populated,
resource-rich region that constitutes two-thirds of the entire territory of the
state of Guyana.
Maduro announced a campaign to claim the Essequibo in 2015, shortly
after Exxon Mobil announced its first discovery of vast oil resources in the
waters off the coast of the region. Maduro established an exclusive “maritime zone” that year over Guyanese
waters, a declaration of no international legal value, and threatened Exxon
Mobil and other companies to stay out of the region unless they explicitly
received permission from Caracas.
Guyana’s government responded at the
time with confusion and outrage, noting that the issue had been resolved via
international agreement in 1899 without controversy. The Guyanese government’s
total rejection of Venezuela’s claims did not stop the Navy from attempting to
enforce the “maritime zone,” leading to stern calls from Guyana for Venezuela
to exit the region. In July 2015,
Venezuela recalled its ambassador to Guyana. Maduro claimed “it
takes a lot of patience to process, digest and not vomit when one reads
and hears the statements against Venezuela … by the current president (of
Guyana)” that his claims to the Essequibo had no international legal basis.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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