Decree
On May 26, 2015, the Government of Venezuela issued Decree 1787 which purported to annexe the territorial waters of Guyana off of Guyana’s Essequibo coast. This action followed the disclosure that Exxon Mobil, a major international oil company, had found hydrocarbons in significant quantities in the territorial waters of Guyana. The effect of the decree was to encroach on the exclusive economic zone of Guyana and to extend Venezuela’s zone of military operations into Guyana’s territory. The exclusive economic zone is the 200 nautical miles from the baseline from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured. Countries have the right to explore, exploit, conserve and manage that portion of sea. In projecting itself into the territorial waters of Guyana as it did, Venezuela ended upon encroaching also on the economic zone of Barbados, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. The action taken by Venezuela is a very aggressive one and seemed to take aim at the oil exploration activities of Exxon Mobil and the disruption of economic activity in Guyana. In light of this development, this article seeks to examine some of the repeated economic initiatives taken by Venezuela to thwart the economic progress of Guyana.
Different economies
The two countries have economies of different size and structure. Venezuela, the larger of the two, had a gross domestic product (GDP) of about US$438 billion in 2013. In contrast, the GDP of Guyana was reported to be about US$3 billion. The Venezuelan economy therefore is 146 times larger than that of the Guyana economy. A comparison also of the per capita income
