Venezuela, over the years, would have been monitoring closely both the exploratory work by ExxonMobil in its search for what, as it turns out, is Guyana’s huge reservoir of oil reserves, the various oil finds that have been realised since around May 2015 and now the unfolding plans for the start of the oil recovery exercises which are imminent and which can transform Guyana’s economic fortunes in the period ahead. Venezuela would, as well, have been taking note of the sense of guarded optimism in Guyana arising out of the country’s anticipation of becoming a major oil producer and what this could mean for our international standing.
All of this, mind you, would have been taking place against the backdrop of Venezuela’s own unrelenting efforts over the decades to make good on its territorial claim, never mind the fact of its spurious nature. Caracas’ posture has almost always been designed to keep Guyana ‘on its toes,’ so to speak, to sustain a pattern of unsettled relations against which backdrop it has been much easier to sustain a pattern of controlled aggression.
That has been Venezuela’s way of sending an unmistakable message that it has no intention, perhaps ever, of conceding the illegality of its claim. Over the years it has been a question of Caracas seizing every propitious moment to remind Guyana of its constant and ominous presence.
That is the context within which the Saturday December 22 interception by a Venezuelan military patrol boat of the ExxonMobil seismic survey vessel deployed in Guyana’s territorial waters must be seen. Once you follow the historical pattern of Venezuela’s behaviour towards Guyana you discern that Caracas, almost unfailingly, picks what one might call awkward moments to send its menacing messages. The most memorable of those in the relatively recent past was the message sent by the Herrera Campins administration in an April 1981 Communique registering its objection to Guyana’s pursuit of the Upper Mazaruni Hydro Electric Project. That came at a time when enormous electricity costs had contributed to the near complete collapse of the Guyana economy, compelling the political administration to begin to seriously contemplate a viable option to fossil fuel which is what the Upper Mazaruni Hydro Project was intended to be. To this day Guyana continues to pay a high price for its failure to create an alternative energy source.
In the same Communique Venezuela announced that it had no intention of renewing the Protocol of Port of Spain which, in 1970, had been agreed to between the two countries and which provided for a “moratorium of twelve (12) years, renewable for successive periods or, by subsequent agreement of the two governments, for periods of not less than five (5) years” at which time the operation of Article IV of the Geneva Agreement would be automatically revived. For Caracas it was all a question of seizing the moment.
It was pretty much the same with the December 22 incident involving the Venezuelan patrol boat and the ExxonMobil seismic survey vessel. It occurred shortly after the confidence vote in the National Assembly and while there may or may not have been a direct connection between the two occurrences the point about the uncanny timing of Venezuela’s acts of hostility is still well made. It should be noted as well that Venezuela’s interception of the seismic vessel comes against the backdrop of what, for some time, has been a steady cross border flow into neighbouring countries, including Guyana, by Venezuelans fleeing their country’s economic woes and what would appear to be President Maduro’s search for ways in which to shift both domestic and international attention away from his administration’s extant monumental challenges.
Watchers of Guyana/Venezuela relations would also have noted that while there have been, during earlier periods, interludes of reasonably amicable relations between the two countries, even in the face of the territorial controversy (the periods of the Carlos Andres Perez and Hugo Chavez administrations being good examples of those) the period coinciding with Venezuela’s current crisis, can hardly be described as one of great warmth, Caracas’ declaration in June this year that it will not participate in the proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has provided a generous measure of evidence, if indeed such were needed, that improving relations with Guyana and more to the point, bringing an end to the territorial controversy is not uppermost on the list of Venezuela’s foreign policy agenda priorities at this time.
Of course and again when precedent is taken account of, it would have been naive for us to delude ourselves into thinking that Venezuela would allow the activities associated with our oil recovery effort to pass without some form of intervention on its part. That would have been at variance with the pattern that had been established over the decades. So that Venezuela’s response to the seismic survey exercises serves to provide a timely reminder of its habit of arbitrarily redrawing both land and maritime boundaries to suit the purposes of its territorial claim.
ExxonMobil has been quick to offer assurances that what happened on December 22 has left its operations unaffected though, as has already been mentioned, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the incident, fitting as it does into a well-established historical pattern, could well be a precursor to the commencement of another round of provocative acts that might, in their seriousness, extend beyond the recent incident. That incident, we need remind ourselves, falls squarely within a well- established pattern of Venezuela’s periodic land, air space and maritime incursions into Guyana’s territory that have occurred over the years; so that while it is by no means a comforting thought it is altogether reasonable to assume that we may not have seen the last of Venezuela’s provocation as the oil recovery exercise unfolds.
In circumstances where there is so much at stake it would be foolhardy not to contemplate the parameters of Guyana’s response in its domestic as well as its external dimensions. Over the years those parameters have been pretty well set. It has been, at the domestic level, a matter of closing ranks across the political divide and such other divides as may exist and sending a unified message to Venezuela underscoring our repudiation of its territorial claim. That has always been the bedrock of our domestic response. Insofar as our foreign policy response is concerned, that too has always been constant, manifesting itself in hectic diplomatic legwork designed to garner the requisite bilateral and multilateral support, CARICOM and the United Nations being among our first ports of call.
What makes a unified domestic response to acts of aggression by Venezuela (and one might argue that this becomes even more important given our present political circumstances) an important consideration is the fact that one particularly insidious aspect of Venezuela’s aggression linked to its territorial claim has been its attempts at sabotage from within, the 1969 Rupununi Uprising being widely felt to have been instigated and/or supported by Venezuela and thought to have been part of a wider plan to sow the seeds of dissent among the population in strategically significant parts of the country, the ultimate aim being to trigger the kind of sessionist action that would suit Caracas’ purpose. One of the outcomes of the Rupununi Uprising was that it helped to sensitize the country to the importance of a holistic national response to Venezuela’s claim that transcends the political divisions and physical spaces that divided us. That is a lesson that we appear to have learnt.
Still it is well worth reminding ourselves that Venezuela would be no less aware than we are of the nexus between ExxonMobil’s oil recovery plans and the kind of economic transformation that will better position us to exercise those developmental options linked to the effective exercise of sovereignty over our all of our territory. In that context it is important that we be reminded of the need to ensure that our extant political circumstances not cause us to lose sight of the much bigger national picture in the matter of Venezuela’s territorial claim, given what might be the deeper implications of the December 22 incident.
