Guayana Esequiba: Geo-Economics of an Occupation
By Irene León – Dec 2, 2023
An air of bonanza has raised the projections of the ExxonMobil corporation, which accumulated around $414 billion in 2022, an unprecedented income in its history which represents 44.8% more than the previous year. It is a gigantic increase if compared to its crisis in 2020, when its losses put its place in the stock market in jeopardy. Research by ExxonMobil indicated that Guyana could become “the country that produces the most barrels of oil per inhabitant in the world, surpassing Kuwait, in that case, when measuring the wealth per capita of its 800 thousand inhabitants, it would become a rich country, since in 2021, its GDP increased by 57.8% and in 2022 by 37.2%”.
However, in both cases, the bonanza comes mainly from the oil and gas exploitation that the corporation and the country have activated in the disputed Esequiba region [or Essequibo] sitting in Venezuelan waters. It is a territory and sea that England has been coveting since the 19th century. Later, the United States placed it in the axis of the Monroe Doctrine, and now it is deploying a joint onslaught with its corporations, seeking to legitimize a situation of “accumulated facts” that has intensified since 2015.
It is a multiform incursion, but with the invariable modality of “licenses” granted by Guyana, mainly to the US corporation ExxonMobil, but also to Chevron, which is also gaining significant revenues from this onslaught. Other corporations, such as Spain’s Repsol or Britain’s Tullow, report substantial revenues from upstream projects in the Upper Essequibo as well.
With the facilities granted by economic liberalization, private corporations have multiplied their dividends; what is more, in addition to the well-known ability of transnationals to evade the taxation of the countries, these countries end up “compensating” them through additional exemptions in free zones so that corporations recover their investment in less than five years and start receiving net profits, usually up to 80% of the benefits, while the producing countries barely collect the balance. In the case of Guyana, only 25% of the profits remain in the country.
In 2019, Guyana’s human development index was the lowest in South America, while extreme poverty affected 35.1% of the population, and the percentage of its citizens residing abroad reached 55%, including up to 80% of citizens with higher education.
Under these conditions, ExxonMobil has come to assume the Esequiba as its own in the territorial dispute that Guyana maintains with Venezuela and with Suriname, because in the first case, a sovereign energy policy obliges Venezuela to operate for the common good and not on the basis of corporate interests. This explains the communication, legal and political mobilization that corporate interests have activated which depicts Venezuela as a state that wants to confiscate up to two thirds of the Guyanese territory.
Things have gone so far in the positioning of this story that Guyana has gone to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to dissociate itself from the recognition of the existing boundary dispute and to prevent the requirement of the consent of both parties to outline the resolution mechanisms, as stated in the 1966 Geneva Agreement, contrary to the Paris Award (1899), promoted by William McKinley, US president of the time, without the participation of Venezuela. Furthermore, Guyana attempted to have the ICJ interfere in Venezuelan internal politics and suspend the popular consultation that Venezuela had called for the people to pronounce themselves on this issue. The ICJ did not do so, which constitutes a gain for sovereignty.
For its part, Venezuela argues that this is not only a matter of national and energy sovereignty but a problem that concerns regional geopolitics since it directly involves the attempt to make corporate interests prevail over the historical certification of a state. According to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro: “…more than Guyana, it is ExxonMobil and the Southern Command that are trying to take the sea that belongs to Venezuela,” hence his call for dialogue with the neighboring country.
ExxonMobil, an emblematic corporation of the United States, with its eyes set on reserves of some 11 billion barrels of oil, abundant natural gas, and ecosystems with great potential for the production of clean energies, has assumed as its own the legal strategy undertaken by “Guyana.” Among the evidence of this is the payment of some $15 million for the legal defense of Guyana.
It is a case of regional interest among others because it highlights the scenarios of dispute between the thesis of corporate power: the “rules-based international order” versus international law and historical legitimacy, from whence Venezuela sustains its defense. The United States—excuse me, Guyana—is not bringing this issue to a court of international law but instead to an arbitration tribunal, knowing that in so-called arbitration tribunals, which are tribunals created by corporations to pressure states, corporations win 90% of the time. According to Venezuelan historian Omar Hurtado, in 1899, arbitration took place between great powers, without Venezuela. And, without Venezuela, the Paris Award granted Great Britain (now Guyana) 90% of the disputed territory without the concurrence of evidentiary legal elements.
Essequibo Dispute: Evidence Surfaces of ExxonMobil Payments to Guyana
Latin America: epicenter of a “new” oil geopolitics
Specialized business projections speak of a new oil geopolitics for 2028, with Brazil (the pre-salt oil region), Guyana (Essequibo) and Argentina (Vaca Muerta) at the top, in that order, while predicting a relegation of Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia, citing a projected decrease in their production as well as their management through public companies committed to the national economy and not to a stateless transnationalization for the benefit of corporations. In all cases, the epicenter of these oil prospects is Latin America and the Caribbean.
Historian Pedro Calzadilla interrelates the Paris Arbitration Award (1899) with the beginning of the concrete application of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), inasmuch as the justification of the arbitration award and the demonstration of US military force not only marked the exclusion of Europe but also defined the hemispheric zone that the United States considers to this day as its area of influence: “America for the Americans.” This fact is evidence that with the Monroe Doctrine, the consolidation of the US geopolitical project to establish itself as a hegemon began.
This approach to the fact is very relevant now, when the maturing of the interrelation between corporate power and the US military project, which act as articulators of the capitalist restoration project, becomes evident. In the case of Guayana Esequiba, ExxonMobil entered without mediation in the territorial dispute. In addition, the onslaught initiated in 2015 coincided with an offensive of economic pressures, mainly the application of unilateral coercive measures that the United States inflicts on Venezuela.
For 140 years, the company now known as ExxonMobil has been growing through a process of monopolistic mergers whose path includes the Standard Oil Company (1870) created by Rockefeller and associates. Steve Coll, author of Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2013) emphasizes that these are two indivisible pieces of a whole: “It [Standard Oil] is a corporate state within the American state that has its own foreign policy rules” and a project to control energy resources on a global scale.
This association is perceptible in different strategic episodes such as the military incursions committed by the United States, in Iraq for example, and more broadly in the Middle East. ExxonMobil turned out to be the Pentagon’s greatest supplier (1999–2005). Also, in US energy projections, ExxonMobil appears among the most significant for the current and future management of clean energies, even if its field of expertise is the exploitation of fossil fuels. However, even in the context of the proposed energy transitions, it is estimated that the demand for crude oil has significant future economic projections. According to the IEA, by 2028, global oil production will increase by 5.8 million barrels per day, and a quarter of the supply will be Latin American.
ExxonMobil is known as the author of the most high-profile ecological disasters, for its denialist stance on climate change, and even for accusations of manipulating information on climate risks and affecting investors. According to OMAL, “The history of this oil corporation, which is part of the US Military Industrial Financial and Communications Military Complex, is a history of dispossession, tax evasion, interference, [and] aggressions against the environment and systematic violations of international law, as well as being closely linked to the State Department and the ultra-right-wing sectors of the US.” Furthermore, this is the profile of the geo-economic actors that maneuver to consummate a territorial appropriation of great magnitude in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
(Resumen Latinoamericano – English) with editing and additional translation by Orinoco Tribune
