The De­cem­ber 3 ref­er­en­dum in Venezuela on that coun­try’s long-stand­ing claim for what amounts to two-third of Cari­com mem­ber state, Guyana, is an event of ex­is­ten­tial im­por­tance for T&T and Cari­com.

Giv­en the phras­ing of the ref­er­en­dum ques­tions (see side­bar) and the fact that the own­er­ship of Es­se­qui­bo is a 124-year-old griev­ance of the Venezue­lan state, it is very like­ly the ref­er­en­dum will go in favour of the cre­ation of a Venezue­lan state in Es­se­qui­bo.

In my view, there is lit­tle doubt that the non-bind­ing, con­sul­ta­tive ref­er­en­dum will re­sult in a vast ma­jor­i­ty vot­ing “yes” to the five ques­tions asked. But what hap­pens on De­cem­ber 4?

Will Venezuela im­me­di­ate­ly move to an­nex the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, which will re­sult in Guyana call­ing on its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to as­sist in the de­fence of its ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty?

If Venezuela moves to an­nex Es­se­qui­bo, it is like­ly to face mil­i­tary op­po­si­tion from the US, which would be pro­tect­ing the in­ter­ests of Exxon­Mo­bil and Hess, the two ma­jor share­hold­ers in the de­vel­op­ment of Guyana’s off­shore oil rich­es, as well as ful­fill­ing the mu­tu­al de­fence chap­ter of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence on Sun­day, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali seemed to sug­gest that Guyana has the sup­port of the US.

Pres­i­dent Ali was asked whether that coun­try would be seek­ing mil­i­tary sup­port from the Unit­ed States and its oth­er strate­gic part­ners in coun­ter­ing any Venezue­lan mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion.

“With the work we are do­ing, we be­lieve that Venezuela would not act in a reck­less way.

“How­ev­er, if they do act in a reck­less way, we have al­ready, as I said be­fore, en­gaged our strate­gic part­ners, we have en­gaged the chief of staff and the se­nior com­mand

“We are con­tin­u­ous­ly en­gaged with part­ners across the re­gion and, of course, ex­tra re­gion­al­ly and we are as­sured that Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty will not, will not see our de­vel­op­ment part­ners stand­ing aside and al­low­ing any­one to ad­van­tage of us.

“Out­side of that, we are al­so spar­ing no ef­fort in en­sur­ing that we con­tin­ue to en­hance our ca­pa­bil­i­ty be­cause we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do so.”

Guyana al­so has the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port, it would seem, of the 15-mem­ber states of Cari­com, if one is to judge by this Oc­to­ber 25 state­ment is­sued by the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at, on be­half of the lead­ers of the Com­mu­ni­ty.

“Cari­com fur­ther notes that two of the ques­tions ap­proved to be posed in the Ref­er­en­dum, if an­swered in the af­fir­ma­tive, would au­tho­rise the gov­ern­ment of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela to em­bark on the an­nex­a­tion of ter­ri­to­ry, which con­sti­tutes part of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana, and to cre­ate a state with­in Venezuela known as Guyana Es­se­qui­bo.

“Cari­com reaf­firms that in­ter­na­tion­al law strict­ly pro­hibits the gov­ern­ment of one State from uni­lat­er­al­ly seiz­ing, an­nex­ing or in­cor­po­rat­ing the ter­ri­to­ry of an­oth­er state. An af­fir­ma­tive vote as afore­said opens the door to the pos­si­ble vi­o­la­tion of this fun­da­men­tal tenet of in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

And T&T, de­spite its fu­ture re­liance on Venezuela’s Drag­on nat­ur­al gas field, is al­so stand­ing be­hind Guyana.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said: “We are con­fi­dent that the gov­ern­ments of Venezuela and Guyana would know that Cari­com’s po­si­tion is that the re­gion must be, and re­main, a zone of peace and that is the best po­si­tion for all of us.

“And sec­ond­ly, we all know that even in the dark­est hour, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion was that if dif­fi­cul­ties arise, the re­sponse ought to be di­a­logue, di­a­logue and di­a­logue.”

Of course, an ar­bi­tra­tion in 1899 award­ed Es­se­qui­bo to Britain, which Venezuela has re­sent­ed since then.

In a state­ment on Sep­tem­ber 22, 2023, Cari­com said it not­ed “with grave con­cern” the con­tents of a com­mu­nique em­a­nat­ing from the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela re­gard­ing the an­nounce­ment made by Guyana, about its in­ten­tion to open bids for cer­tain oil blocks in the wa­ters ad­ja­cent to Guyana’s coast.

“Cari­com views the stat­ed in­ten­tion of Venezuela to ‘ap­ply all the nec­es­sary mea­sures’ to pre­vent the op­er­a­tions li­censed by Guyana in its wa­ters, as a threat of the use of force con­trary to in­ter­na­tion­al law.

“It is al­so not in keep­ing with the long-stand­ing po­si­tion of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries that our Re­gion must re­main a Zone of Peace,” said Cari­com.

The Cari­com ref­er­ence to Guyana’s “in­ten­tion to open bids for cer­tain oil blocks in the wa­ters ad­ja­cent to Guyana’s coast,” per­tains to the coun­try’s ex­pan­sion of its search for off­shore oil and nat­ur­al gas.

Ac­cord­ing to a Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion re­port on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2023, Guyana launched its first round of com­pet­i­tive off­shore oil and gas li­cens­ing auc­tion in De­cem­ber 2022 with an April 2023 dead­line.

That auc­tion was ex­tend­ed to June, Ju­ly, and then to Sep­tem­ber 12, 2023, “as the ad­min­is­tra­tion moved to ad­vance the sec­tor’s reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.”

On Sep­tem­ber 14, two days af­ter the clo­sure of the auc­tion, Guyana’s vice pres­i­dent, Bhar­rat Jagdeo, an­nounced that the coun­try had re­ceived eight bids for 14 of the oil blocks.

The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment ob­ject­ed to Guyana’s off­shore bid­ding round on Sep­tem­ber 19, stat­ing in a post on so­cial me­dia, ac­cord­ing to a Reuters re­port: “Venezuela strong­ly re­jects the il­le­gal li­cens­ing round be­ing car­ried out in Guyana as it in­tends to use mar­itime ar­eas that are sub­ject of de­lim­i­ta­tion be­tween both coun­tries.”

Venezuela ar­gued that Guyana does not have sov­er­eign rights over the ar­eas, so any oil ac­tiv­i­ty there must be done in agree­ment with Venezuela.

“These ac­tions will not gen­er­ate any type of rights to third par­ties par­tic­i­pat­ing in the process,” Venezuela added, ac­cord­ing to the Reuters re­port.

Last month, Jagdeo an­nounced that the Exxon­Mo­bil-led con­sor­tium and the France-head­quar­tered To­tal­En­er­gies were among those that won bids in the South Amer­i­can na­tion’s in­au­gur­al com­pet­i­tive bid round.

Shal­low wa­ter blocks have been award­ed to a con­sor­tium of To­tal­En­er­gies, Qatar En­er­gy and Petronas; the Nige­ria-based In­ter­na­tion­al Group In­vest­ment Inc; and the Amer­i­can-owned Lib­er­ty Pe­tro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion; Exxon­Mo­bil, Hess and CNOOC.

Deep­wa­ter blocks were award­ed to Del­corp, a Guyanese-reg­is­tered com­pa­ny made up of two Sau­di Ara­bi­an com­pa­nies Watad En­er­gies and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd and Ara­bi­an Drilling Com­pa­ny, and Sis­pro Inc, a com­pa­ny com­pris­ing Guyanese share­hold­ers.

• Why did Venezuela wait un­til Sep­tem­ber 19, 2023—AF­TER Guyana’s vice pres­i­dent, Bhar­rat Jagdeo, an­nounced that eight off­shore blocks were to be award­ed—to state that it (Venezuela) “strong­ly re­jects the il­le­gal li­cens­ing round,” that its neigh­bour had launched in De­cem­ber?

• Is it a co­in­ci­dence that the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment set De­cem­ber 3, 2023, as the date of its ref­er­en­dum on the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion on Oc­to­ber 20, three days af­ter the Oc­to­ber 17, 2023 sign­ing of an agree­ment to pave the way for pres­i­den­tial elec­tions next year, which are to be over­seen by in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers?

• Is the es­ca­la­tion of Venezuela’s long-stand­ing bor­der dis­pute with Guyana, at this time, an at­tempt by the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro to cre­ate a pub­lic, in­ter­na­tion­al dis­trac­tion that would cre­ate a pre­text to de­lay the hold­ing of free and fair pres­i­den­tial elec­tions?

• Or is the ref­er­en­dum sim­ply an at­tempt to gain ac­cess to Es­se­qui­bo’s off­shore en­er­gy re­sources and its on­shore gold and oth­er min­er­als.