Raphael John-Lall

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions prac­ti­tion­er, Dr. Ray­mond Mark Kir­ton, says Venezuela’s acts of ag­gres­sion against Guyana over the years have im­pact­ed the econ­o­my of the Eng­lish-speak­ing, South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Kir­ton, who is Guyanese, made the point at a fo­rum host­ed the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Val­sayn last Mon­day on the Venezuela and Guyana bor­der dis­pute.

Kir­ton, a for­mer Ag. Di­rec­tor, In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) ac­cused Venezuela of at­tempt­ing to sab­o­tage Guyana’s econ­o­my.

“Venezuela, since 1966, through its acts of ag­gres­sion has sig­nif­cant­ly im­pact­ed the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of Guyana. Acts of ag­gres­sion have in­clud­ed, but not lim­it­ed to, in­cur­sions in­to Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al space, the seizure of Guyana’s fish­ing ves­sels, the ar­rest of a ves­sel con­duct­ing seis­mic sur­veys in Guyana’s ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone as well as as threats to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies want­i­ng to en­gage in eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship agree­ments with the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana.”

He al­so blamed the cur­rent Nicolás Maduro Gov­ern­ment for in­creas­ing ten­sions and ar­gued that Venezuela’s ac­tions are be­cause of Guyana’s emerg­ing en­er­gy sec­tor.

“We have now wit­nessed the Maduro Gov­ern­ment’s un­prece­dent­ed ac­tions to hold a ref­er­en­dum and to reignite uni­ty and pa­tri­o­tism in re­la­tion to the ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims and to gain new lev­els of le­git­i­ma­cy in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. One can­not dis­count the emer­gence of the oil and gas sec­tor and its po­ten­tial links to this reemerg­ing ac­tion by Venezuela.”

Kir­ton wants T&T and the rest of the Cari­com to hold an ur­gent meet­ing on the emerg­ing sit­u­a­tion be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.

“With diplo­ma­cy con­tin­u­ing to be Guyana’s first line of de­fence, it can be ar­gued that giv­en the un­precent­ed lev­els of ag­gres­sion and the state­ments about pos­si­ble armed in­ter­ven­tion and an­nex­a­tion, Guyana should im­me­di­ate­ly ap­proach the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to in­form that body.

“Giv­en the clear dan­ger to the Guyanese cit­i­zen­ry, I think there should be an im­me­di­ate spe­cial meet­ing of Cari­com heads giv­en the ris­ing ten­sions and Venezue­lan troop move­ment amidst state­ments about an­nex­a­tion.”

He said he be­lieves T&T should look af­ter its eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests with re­gard to its en­er­gy and oth­er eco­nom­ic re­la­tions with Venezuela.

How­ev­er, he added T&T should work with the rest of Cari­com to en­sure that the bor­der ten­sion be­tween Guyana and Venezuela does not es­ca­late in­to a full blown con­flict like a war.

“The im­pact of any of ag­gres­sion would af­fect the re­gion. If there is the lik­li­hood of that, then T&T could be af­fect­ed. There should be a Cari­com re­sponse. Of course, T&T has its own in­ter­est like the rest of Cari­com,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Rear Ad­mi­ral (rtd) Gary An­tho­ny Rod­well Best, who is a for­mer chief of staff of Guyana’s De­fence Force. al­so spoke at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege’s fo­rum.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian by tele­phone that if there is an es­ca­la­tion and even war, it will have se­ri­ous neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions for the economies of T&T and the rest of the re­gion.

“This will im­pact on the cost of liv­ing as mon­ey will be spent on a new con­flict. There will al­so be a cost to a mil­i­tary buildup. An at­tack on one Cari­com mem­ber state is an at­tack against all.”

Speak­ing dur­ing the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege’s fo­rum on Mon­day night, Best de­scribed Venezuela as a “hege­mon­ic pow­er” will­ing to break in­ter­na­tion­al rules for its own gains.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that Venezuela’s Petro­Caribe arrange­ment with Cari­com coun­tries to sell oil be­low world mar­ket prices to them is sim­ply a way to ma­nip­u­late poor Caribbean coun­tries.

“In my view, the Petro­Caribe ini­tia­tive is be­ing used by Venezuela as a sua­sion tool to se­cure the co-op­er­a­tion of and oth­er­wise in­flu­ence Cari­com states to be at least am­biva­lent in their sup­port to Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty. Venezuela, in this sense, pre­tends to be a benev­o­lent hege­mon.”

Dook­er­an speaks out

For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter and al­so a For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter dur­ing the 2010 to 2015 Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Win­ston Dook­er­an wants T&T to de­fend its eco­nom­ic and na­tion­al in­ter­ests as ten­sions con­tin­ue to rise be­tween Venezuela and Guyana.

Ten­sions have risen over the last few months as Venezuela con­tin­ues to lay claim to the oil-rich Es­se­qui­bo re­gion in Guyana.

Venezuela is due to hold a non-bind­ing na­tion­al ref­er­en­dum on the is­sue on De­cem­ber 3. In the ref­er­en­dum, Venezue­lans will be asked five ques­tions, in­clud­ing if they agree to re­ject “by all means in ac­cor­dance with the law, the line fraud­u­lent­ly in­ter­posed by the 1899 Paris Ar­bi­tra­tion Award, which seeks to de­prive us of our Guayana Es­e­qui­ba.” Venezue­lans will al­so be asked if they agree with the cre­ation of the Guayana Es­e­qui­ba state and the grant­i­ng of Venezue­lan cit­i­zen­ship and iden­ti­ty cards to the cit­i­zens of the re­gion.

The diplo­mat­ic quar­rel over the 160,000-square-kilo­me­ter ter­ri­to­ry had been most­ly un­event­ful for sev­er­al decades but it heat­ed up on Sep­tem­ber 12 fol­low­ing Guyana re­ceiv­ing bids for eight of 14 oil and gas ex­plo­ration blocks that are off­shore the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion in its first com­pe­ti­tion auc­tion. Among the suc­cess­ful bid­ders for the eight blocks in­clude groups formed by Amer­i­can en­er­gy multi­na­tion­al Exxon­Mo­bil and France’s To­tal­En­er­gies.

In April, Exxon­Mo­bil said it was tar­get­ing to have six FP­SOs (float­ing pro­duc­tion stor­age and of­fload­ing) plat­forms on­line by the end of 2027, bring­ing Guyana’s pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty to more than 1.2 mil­lion bar­rels per day.

T&T and Venezuela al­so have com­mer­cial ties and in Sep­tem­ber, T&T and Venezuela signed an agree­ment to joint­ly ex­plore the Drag­on Gas field shared be­tween the two coun­tries.

“Should the dis­pute be­tween Venezuela and Guyana es­ca­late in­to a con­flict or in­va­sion, there will be ex­ter­nal reper­cus­sions which, at least, will stall, for yet an­oth­er time the Drag­on Field project. In­vestor’s con­fi­dence will be dis­rupt­ed and the terms of the arrange­ment will be at risk. If there is no in­va­sion con­flict, the arrange­ments may per­sist, but con­fi­dence will wane,” Dook­er­an told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Dook­er­an al­so said T&T and Venezuela should main­tain com­mer­cial ties and con­tin­ue to ho­n­our all con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions.

“I do not think that T&T should cut eco­nom­ic ties with Venezuela, it should ad­here to the Cari­com po­si­tion, and of­fer to bro­ker a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion with the sup­port of oth­er coun­tries. It should be­gin ‘back door’ talks to avert such an even­tu­al­i­ty , and work out a path­way to halt any es­ca­la­tion - a diplo­mat­ic path­way,” he said.

Last Mon­day at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he hopes a long run­ning dis­pute be­tween Venezuela and its neigh­bour Guyana over the po­ten­tial­ly oil-rich ter­ri­to­ry does not have im­pli­ca­tions for projects with T&T.

“I would not like to see the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Venezuela and Guyana ever get to a point where con­se­quent ac­tions will neg­a­tive­ly dam­age us,” he said.