Here in T&T, the case be­fore the ICJ, is seen as a Guyanese sov­er­eign­ty mat­ter and a Cari­com diplo­mat­ic ques­tion. That fram­ing has al­ways been in­com­plete and there is more at stake for T&T than we might re­alise.

Venezuela does not ac­cept the ju­ris­dic­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in the case over the va­lid­i­ty of the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award. Guyana is ask­ing the Court to con­firm the 1899 bound­ary; Venezuela’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive re­peat­ed that the dis­pute can on­ly be re­solved through a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment un­der the 1966 Gene­va Agree­ment.

The fail­ure to ar­rive at a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment is the rea­son why the mat­ter is be­fore the Court, hav­ing been re­ferred there by the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions un­der the Gene­va Agree­ment and the Court has ruled it has ju­ris­dic­tion. It is all a seem­ing­ly cir­cu­lar log­ic with the in­ten­tion from Cara­cas to keep the mat­ter open.

It is im­por­tant to ap­pre­ci­ate that the Venezue­lan pos­ture be­fore the Court is part of a wider re­gion­al pat­tern, and T&T is al­ready on the re­ceiv­ing end of that pat­tern in the Gulf of Paria, in the At­lantic Ocean, and across our en­er­gy strat­e­gy.

Venezuela’s be­hav­iour across its land and mar­itime dis­putes fol­lows a recog­nis­able pat­tern. Cara­cas re­jects or un­der­mines third par­ty in­volve­ment, re­frames the dis­pute as un­re­solved and ne­go­tiable, cre­ates facts on the ground through de­crees, maps, ref­er­en­da, mil­i­tary de­ploy­ments and in­ci­dents at sea, and then of­fers ne­go­ti­a­tion from a bar­gain­ing po­si­tion im­proved by co­er­cion and pres­sure. As I de­scribed last week with Petro­Caribe, it is a clas­sic case of the big­ger na­tion di­rect­ing sharp pow­er or co­er­cive ag­gres­sion to­wards more vul­ner­a­ble states.

With Guyana, the pres­sure has been overt and well doc­u­ment­ed. With T&T, the pres­sure has been less dra­mat­ic so it is eas­i­er to take it for grant­ed. We are ful­ly aware of how Venezuela man­aged its bor­ders re­lat­ed to the hu­man traf­fick­ing, drug traf­fick­ing and in gen­er­al the mi­grant is­sue, but we seem to have for­got­ten the fre­quent skir­mish­es the oth­er way be­tween the Guardia Na­cional and lo­cal fish­er­men over the years. We should re­call the in­tim­i­da­tion of Venezue­lan per­son­nel in 2012 board­ing of a Petrotrin oil rig in the Gulf to check whether it was op­er­at­ing in Venezue­lan wa­ters. Petrotrin lat­er con­firmed the rig was with­in T&T’s mar­itime bor­ders. We now have the “diplo­mat­ic row” over a dis­put­ed oil spill, echo­ing a 2017 episode.

These records mat­ter for two rea­sons. Venezuela has re­peat­ed­ly act­ed co­er­cive­ly across or near the mar­itime bound­ary with T&T, with which it has a for­mal 1990 de­lim­i­ta­tion treaty. This same op­er­a­tional log­ic is more high pro­file against Guyana’s seis­mic ves­sels and float­ing oil units geared to­wards a dif­fer­ent out­come since that area is un­der dis­pute.

Mar­itime

We have to ap­pre­ci­ate that the Es­se­qui­bo claim by Venezuela is al­so in sub­stance a mar­itime case. Un­der the law of the sea, mar­itime en­ti­tle­ments flow from land ter­ri­to­ry. The ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone ex­tends up to 200 nau­ti­cal miles from a coastal state’s base­lines, and con­ti­nen­tal shelf rights al­so arise from coastal ge­og­ra­phy. If Es­se­qui­bo is Guyanese ter­ri­to­ry, the At­lantic wa­ters off Es­se­qui­bo are Guyana’s mar­itime space. If Venezuela could ever con­vert its land claim in­to recog­nised con­trol of the Es­se­qui­bo coast, it would seek to con­vert that coast­line in­to ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea, ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone, con­ti­nen­tal shelf, off­shore oil rights, fish­eries ju­ris­dic­tion and At­lantic naval reach.

Cara­cas has test­ed this log­ic be­fore. In May 2015, Pres­i­den­tial De­cree 1787 cre­at­ed mar­itime and in­su­lar in­te­gral de­fence zones whose map­ping was read by Guyana and Cari­com as pro­ject­ing Venezue­lan ju­ris­dic­tion in­to wa­ters gen­er­at­ed by Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo coast. Cari­com stat­ed that mem­ber states do not ac­cept uni­lat­er­al procla­ma­tions in­con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al law and called for with­draw­al of el­e­ments ap­ply­ing to Cari­com ter­ri­to­ry and mar­itime space. G

uyana’s then For­eign Min­is­ter Carl Greenidge iden­ti­fied Suri­name, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St Lu­cia, Do­mini­ca, Montser­rat, and St Kitts and Nevis as states whose mar­itime en­ti­tle­ments could be touched. De­cree 1787 was re­placed by De­cree 1859 in Ju­ly 2015, which re­port­ed­ly re­moved the lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude co­or­di­nates that had made the orig­i­nal so provoca­tive. The strate­gic claim, how­ev­er, did not dis­ap­pear.

T&T filed an orig­i­nal con­ti­nen­tal shelf sub­mis­sion with the Com­mis­sion on the Lim­its of the Con­ti­nen­tal Shelf in May 2009, and filed an amend­ed sub­mis­sion on April 14 2023. Un­der Ar­ti­cle 76 of UN­C­LOS, a coastal state can claim sov­er­eign rights over the seabed and sub­soil be­yond 200 nau­ti­cal miles where the ge­ol­o­gy sup­ports it. The amend­ed sub­mis­sion seeks to se­cure T&T’s seabed ju­ris­dic­tion in an area east and north east of Trinidad, with the fur­thest points reach­ing to­ward 350 nau­ti­cal miles, adding sig­nif­i­cant seabed ter­ri­to­ry. The acreage sits in the broad­er At­lantic pe­tro­le­um trend that has trans­formed Guyana and Suri­name.

On Ju­ly 10 2023, Venezuela lodged a com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tions ob­ject­ing to the amend­ed sub­mis­sion, ex­press­ing sur­prise that it had not been con­sult­ed, and as­sert­ing rights in the area. The ob­jec­tion fits in­side Venezuela’s wider Facha­da Atlán­ti­ca strat­e­gy, which con­nects the Orinoco Delta pro­jec­tion, its mar­itime claims and its Es­se­qui­bo po­si­tion. The CLCS of­ten re­frains from con­sid­er­ing sub­mis­sions where un­re­solved mar­itime dis­putes ex­ist. Our claim re­mains legal­ly alive, but Venezuela’s ob­jec­tion cre­ates a de­lay. Cara­cas fol­lowed its es­tab­lished play­book - in­tro­duce un­cer­tain­ty, lock in a pro­ce­dur­al block­age, and pre­serve the op­tion to ne­go­ti­ate lat­er.

Lever­age

In Au­gust 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go award­ed Exxon­Mo­bil a large ul­tra deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration area with­in our ju­ris­dic­tion, TTUD-1, con­sol­i­dat­ed from sev­en blocks. TTUD-1 sits north of the Stabroek Block, where Exxon’s Guyana pro­duc­tion reached around 650,000 bar­rels per day in Sep­tem­ber 2025. Note well that this Guyana re­source is claimed by Venezuela as part of the Es­se­qui­bo dis­pute.

The re­sponse from Venezuela to the award by T&T was a re­quest from then Vice Pres­i­dent and Oil Min­is­ter Del­cy Ro­dríguez ask­ing T&T for de­tails about Exxon’s planned field tests, cit­ing the 1990 treaty’s no­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vi­sion. Ap­pre­ci­ate the con­tin­ued ex­er­cise of co­er­cive or “sharp pow­er”.

A sim­i­lar ap­proach ap­plies with the Trinidad-Venezuela gas projects. In Oc­to­ber 2025, Venezuela moved to sus­pend en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment co­op­er­a­tion with Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing joint gas projects, af­ter a US war­ship ar­rived for joint ex­er­cis­es. Joint naval ex­er­cis­es be­tween T&T and the US are not new. Fur­ther his­to­ry will record that T&T was not part of any mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela, but that did not pre­vent Cara­cas from tak­ing a stance con­sis­tent with their es­tab­lished mode of op­er­a­tion.

We are wit­ness­ing es­sen­tial­ly the same strat­e­gy across the re­gion, ex­pressed through dif­fer­ent chan­nels.

Bal­anc­ing Act

T&T can­not wish away ge­og­ra­phy. Venezuela is the prox­i­mate neigh­bour, the source of sub­stan­tial gas op­tion­al­i­ty, and a state that has demon­strat­ed, over years of Gulf of Paria in­ci­dents and a longer record against Guyana, a will­ing­ness to use co­er­cion across mar­itime, en­erg, and diplo­mat­ic chan­nels. T&T al­so can­not wish away its Cari­com com­mit­ments, its treaty oblig­a­tions, or the strate­gic re­al­i­ty that a Venezue­lan vic­to­ry in the At­lantic would com­press T&T’s own fu­ture mar­itime room. The bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise is not op­tion­al, and con­trary to oth­er opin­ions ex­pressed, the an­swer is not neu­tral­i­ty.

The strongest pos­ture is that T&T should con­tin­ue to sup­port Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and the ICJ process, be­cause the same le­gal or­der re­lat­ed to the Es­se­qui­bo al­so pro­tects T&T’s ex­tend­ed shelf sub­mis­sion and its 1990 treaty rights.

On nat­ur­al gas, the les­son of the past five years is that Venezue­lan sup­ply can­not be treat­ed as a foun­da­tion of na­tion­al en­er­gy strat­e­gy or se­cu­ri­ty. This is some­thing that cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has in­di­cat­ed very clear­ly.

Exxon’s en­try in­to the ul­tra deep­wa­ter is the most cred­i­ble medi­um-term lever, if suc­cess­ful for re­duc­ing de­pen­dence on Venezue­lan con­trolled gas, but it will be read in Cara­cas as a strate­gic sig­nal, and that sig­nal must be man­aged care­ful­ly. The re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States should be in­sti­tu­tion­al rather than episod­ic. Again, this is a prop­er and wel­come pol­i­cy shift by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in T&T. That re­la­tion­ship should con­tin­ue to be framed around en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and in­fra­struc­ture pro­tec­tion. T&T has made it clear that it is not par­tic­i­pat­ing in regime change ac­tiv­i­ties, which car­ries its own re­tal­ia­to­ry cost.

If the ICJ af­firms the 1899 bound­ary and the in­tegri­ty of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry, the At­lantic le­gal ar­chi­tec­ture that pro­tects Caribbean mar­itime en­ti­tle­ments be­comes stronger. Venezuela’s abil­i­ty to con­vert na­tion­al­ist claims in­to mar­itime pres­sure nar­rows. T&T’s own ex­tend­ed shelf sub­mis­sion be­comes eas­i­er to de­fend diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, and the ne­go­ti­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment around cross-bor­der gas be­comes more pre­dictable. If Venezuela re­jects an ad­verse out­come and pur­sues its claims through oth­er means, the op­er­a­tional pat­tern vis­i­ble in the Gulf of Paria, in the At­lantic, and around en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion will con­tin­ue, and T&T will need to lean hard­er on the le­gal and diplo­mat­ic in­stru­ments al­ready at its dis­pos­al.

Ian Nar­ine is a fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant who isn’t gaslight­ed by the gas con­ver­sa­tions. Please send your com­ments to ian@ian­nar­ine.com