Raphael John-Lall

Two Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives in its Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, Wills Rangel and Ja­cobo Tor­res are ac­cus­ing US en­er­gy gi­ant Exxon­Mo­bil of stok­ing the ten­sions that cur­rent­ly ex­ist be­tween Guyana and Venezuela.

They were al­so backed by the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU).

Rangel and Tor­res are al­so Venezue­lan labour lead­ers and mem­bers of the rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty (PSUV),spoke on Mon­day night at a fo­rum on the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute be­tween Venezuela and Guyana host­ed by the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Val­sayn.

The dis­cus­sion sparked in­ter­est with al­most 300 on­line view­ers join­ing the vir­tu­al fo­rum on the Col­lege’s YouTube chan­nel, a sharp in­crease from nor­mal vir­tu­al view­er­ship.

On De­cem­ber 3, Venezue­lans will go to the polls in a non-bind­ing pub­lic ref­er­en­dum to in­di­cate if they agree with their gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion to in­cor­po­rate the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo ter­ri­to­ry as part of Venezuela, re­name the state Guayana Es­e­qui­ba, and grant its pop­u­la­tion, cur­rent­ly Guyana na­tion­als, Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship.

On Tues­day, Guardian Me­dia called Ex­on­n­Mo­bil’s of­fice in Guyana ask­ing for a com­ment on the Venezue­lan dis­pute with Guyana and sent an email but up to press time, they had not an­swered the calls or the email.

With re­gard to Exxon­Mo­bil’s op­er­a­tions in Guyana, the web­site “Off­shore En­er­gy” quot­ed Liam Mal­lon, Pres­i­dent of Exxon­Mo­bil Up­stream Com­pa­ny as say­ing: “Each new project sup­ports eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and ac­cess to re­sources that will ben­e­fit Guyanese com­mu­ni­ties while al­so help­ing to meet the world’s en­er­gy de­mand. We’re pleased to work in part­ner­ship with the Guyanese Gov­ern­ment to make re­li­able en­er­gy ac­ces­si­ble and sus­tain­able.”

Off­shore En­er­gy, in the ar­ti­cle dat­ed No­vem­ber 14, 2023, added that Exxon­Mo­bil has start­ed pro­duc­tion from its third oil de­vel­op­ment at the Stabroek block off­shore Guyana, boost­ing to­tal pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty in the coun­try to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 620,000 bar­rels per day.

Venezuela’s an­tag­o­nis­tic re­la­tion­ship with Exxon­Mo­bil goes back 16 years as in 2007, Venezuela na­tion­alised Exxon­Mo­bil’s oil projects in Venezuela.

Exxon­Mo­bil orig­i­nal­ly filed the ar­bi­tra­tion case against Venezuela in 2008 over the Cer­ro Ne­gro Project, which was a joint ven­ture, un­til the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment took over Exxon­Mo­bil’s 42 per cent in­ter­est in June 2007.

In 2014, a World Bank ar­bi­tra­tion tri­bunal or­dered Venezuela to pay Exxon Mo­bil Corp about US$1.6 bil­lion to com­pen­sate for the 2007 oil na­tion­al­i­sa­tion.

Rangel who is the Pres­i­dent of the Bo­li­var­i­an So­cial­ist Work­ers’ Cen­tral (CB­ST) and a mem­ber of the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly gave a re­cap of the bro­ken re­la­tion­ship with the oil and gas gi­ant and ac­cused it of flam­ing the al­ready ex­ist­ing bad re­la­tion­ship with Guyana.

“Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to na­tion­alise Exxon­Mo­bil’s in­ter­ests. Exxon­Mo­bil then sued Venezuela for US$14 bil­lion dol­lars and it was a de­mand of the Unit­ed States.”

In re­la­tion to oth­er ac­cu­sa­tions against Venezuela, he said the coun­try has ob­served that some in­ter­na­tion­al pow­ers are try­ing to un­der­mine Venezuela’s Petro­Caribe ini­tia­tive which al­lows Venezuela to sell oil to Caribbean coun­tries be­low mar­ket prices.

“This is a tool of in­te­gra­tion cre­at­ed by Com­man­der Hugo Chavez to help the Caribbean peo­ple. Some coun­tries have a lim­it­ed au­ton­o­my in terms of their fu­el but with Petro­Caribe they ex­tend­ed the num­ber of days they could ob­tain oil. Many Caribbean coun­tries were free from pres­sure from in­ter­na­tion­al oil cor­po­ra­tions like Exxon­Mo­bil and they ex­er­cised pres­sure on some Caribbean na­tions. Exxon­Mo­bil has been su­ing Venezuela be­fore in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions for 15 years just be­cause the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment man­ages our oil re­serves in an in­de­pen­dent way. Through the Petro­Caribe project, we al­so of­fer the Caribbean coun­tries our oil to free them from the colo­nial yoke im­posed for over 500 years.”

He added some Caribbean coun­tries are suf­fer­ing from an “en­er­gy cri­sis” and they wish they could ac­cess Venezuela’s low­er-than-mar­ket price oil. How­ev­er, they are afraid of the de­vel­oped coun­tries and their multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies.

Tor­res, who al­so spoke at the fo­rum on Mon­day night, is as well a mem­ber of the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly (Venezue­lan Par­lia­ment) rep­re­sent­ing work­ers, mem­ber of the Vice-Pres­i­den­cy of the PSUV and In­ter­na­tion­al Co­or­di­na­tor of the Bo­li­var­i­an So­cial­ist Con­fed­er­a­tion of Work­ers (CB­ST).

He said that Venezuela’s oil re­sources are not just to earn rev­enue but al­so to help the poor in Venezuela and the Caribbean re­gion.

“It is not just an in­come or a way to raise rev­enue, it is a way to de­vel­op our peo­ple. We took away the com­mer­cial char­ac­ter and trans­formed it in­to the so­cial de­vel­op­ment of our peo­ple.”

Lo­cal trade unions

Speak­ing dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment of the fo­rum the OW­TU’s ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fice, Ozzi War­wick, con­demned multi­na­tion­als like Exxon­Mo­bil for its al­leged in­volve­ment in the Venezue­lan and Guyanese land con­tro­ver­sy.

“This is­sue has less to do with a ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute and more to do with the role of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions in desta­bil­is­ing and fu­el­ing con­flict. We should not ig­nore or take for grant­ed the role of Exxon­Mo­bil in fu­el­ing this con­flict and the role of for­eign em­pires. For most of our colo­nial his­to­ry, this re­gion was a zone of war and ex­treme vi­o­lence with slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship feulled by Eu­ro­pean em­pires. Now as in­de­pen­dent na­tion states we should not al­low our­selves to be ma­nip­u­lat­ed by for­eign cap­i­tal and multi­na­tion­al en­ter­pris­es. We must hold to this re­gion be­ing a zone of peace,” said War­wick, who is al­so gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment

He al­so called on oth­er Cari­com coun­tries to pro­tect the peace the re­gion en­joys.

“We have to do every­thing pos­si­ble to pre­serve that peace. There­fore, di­a­logue is cru­cial and the par­ties must talk in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions when there are con­flict­ing par­ties. I think we heard it very clear­ly; Venezuela wants to talk.”

Don’t blame Exxon­Mo­bil

Prof An­tho­ny Bryan, who is a co-founder of the Caribbean Pol­i­cy Con­sor­tium (cpc­caribbean.org), pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, and a for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at UWI, St. Au­gus­tine, told the Busi­ness Guardian that that Exxon­Mo­bil should not be blamed for the lat­est flare up be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.

“I do not think that the in­ter­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies have any role in stir­ring up trou­ble be­tween Guyana and Venezuela. Their in­ter­est is in oil pro­duc­tion re­gard­less of which na­tion it be­longs to. Blam­ing the oil com­pa­nies seems use­less. It pays to re­mem­ber that the com­pa­nies, like na­tion states, do not have friends, they have in­ter­ests!”

He added that Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s lat­est round of “sabre-rat­tling” be­gan af­ter Guyana launched its first ever com­pet­i­tive oil block auc­tion in De­cem­ber 2022.

“The spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess of Exxon­Mo­bil and To­tal­En­er­gies does pro­voke some an­i­mos­i­ty on the part of Maduro. It’s dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why since Venezuela al­ready has the largest oil re­serves on the plan­et. It’s just con­ve­nient to blame the com­pa­nies”

Bryan al­so does not think that there will be armed con­flict be­tween Guyana and Venezuela.

“I doubt there will be any full-scale armed con­flict. There is a lot of ‘sabre-rat­tling’ by Pres­i­dent Maduro who is seek­ing to so­lid­i­fy his pow­er for the up­com­ing elec­tions. Oth­er pres­i­dents in the past have used Es­se­qui­bo as a po­lit­i­cal tool to whip up na­tion­al­ism in their favour at elec­tion time. He is just the lat­est al­though he is push­ing the en­ve­lope more than his pre­de­ces­sors have done.”

He al­so said it would be lo­gis­ti­cal­ly dif­fi­cult for the Venezue­lan army to in­vade Guyana.

“It would be very dif­fi­cult for Venezuela to try a land in­va­sion. The fea­si­ble route to the Es­se­qui­bo is through Ro­raima but the Brazil­ian mil­i­tary sta­tioned there is a strong de­ter­rent to any Venezue­lan mil­i­tary pas­sage. Maduro is try­ing to por­tray Venezuela as the vic­tim and the un­der­dog, but the US, Brazil, the Com­mon­wealth, and oth­ers across the globe are sup­port­ive of Guyana. So, a mil­i­tary in­cur­sion would have dire con­se­quences for Venezuela.”

Fi­nal­ly, he does not think that the con­flict will im­pact T&T’s and Venezuela’s re­cent en­er­gy agree­ments.

“I do not see any im­pact on T&T and on the Drag­on gas agree­ment with Venezuela. They are two sep­a­rate mat­ters. The Venezue­lans are aware of T&T’s sup­port for the Cari­com po­si­tion on Guyana. Of­ten pol­i­tics can trump eco­nom­ics, but I do not see it in this case. The Drag­on agree­ment is too valu­able for both Venezuela and T&T. I am sure that trade, busi­ness, and cul­tur­al re­la­tions will con­tin­ue as be­fore.”