The Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), Luis Al­ma­gro, has crit­i­cised Venezuela’s po­si­tion re­gard­ing Guyana’s on go­ing oil auc­tion.

“We ve­he­ment­ly de­cry in­tim­ida­to­ry tac­tics that seek to un­der­mine the prin­ci­ple of “good neigh­bourli­ness,” Al­mar­go said in a state­ment.

Last week the Ir­faan Ali ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced that it had re­ceived bids for eight of the coun­try’s oil blocks which are lo­cat­ed off­shore Guyana.

But in a state­ment, the Nico­las Maduro gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed the auc­tion say­ing “the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela, strong­ly re­jects the il­le­gal bid­ding round for oil blocks cur­rent­ly car­ried out by the Gov­ern­ment of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana (Blocks for ten­der for 2022 – Guyana Li­cens­ing Round), since it in­tends to have mar­itime ar­eas pend­ing de­lim­i­ta­tion be­tween the two coun­tries”.

The OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al said the hemi­spher­ic body recog­nis­es the right of Guyana to wel­come in­vestors.

“Guyana must pre­serve its ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and se­cu­ri­ty by ad­dress­ing its case with Venezuela at the ICJ (In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice),” Al­ma­gro said.

Both the Guyana gov­ern­ment and the op­po­si­tion par­ties con­demned Venezuela’s stance with Pres­i­dent Ali say­ing the gov­ern­ment of Guyana re­serves the right to pur­sue eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties in any por­tion of its sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry or any ap­pur­tenant mar­itime ter­ri­to­ries.

“Any uni­lat­er­al at­tempt by Venezuela to re­strict the ex­er­cise by Guyana of its sov­er­eign­ty and sov­er­eign rights will be whol­ly in­con­sis­tent with the Gene­va Agree­ment and the rule of in­ter­na­tion­al law,” Ali added.

Both Guyana and Venezuela have tak­en their bor­der dis­pute to the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJU) with George­town seek­ing a fi­nal and bind­ing judge­ment that the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award, which es­tab­lished the lo­ca­tion of the land bound­ary be­tween then British Guiana and Venezuela, re­mains valid and that the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion be­longs to Guyana and not Venezuela.

In its state­ment, Cara­cas al­so al­so not­ed that any ar­bi­trary con­ces­sion grant­ed would be “un­ac­cept­able” and that “these ac­tions do not gen­er­ate any type of rights to third par­ties who par­tic­i­pate in such a process.”

WASH­ING­TON, Sept 20, CMC -

CMC/gt/ir/2023