On Tues­day, Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Pe­tro­le­um and Pres­i­dent of Venezuela’s na­tion­al oil com­pa­ny, PDVSA, Rafael Tel­lechea, called on PDVSA’s em­ploy­ees to cre­ate the con­di­tions to es­tab­lish the bases of the com­pa­ny in the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion which Guyana cur­rent­ly is in con­trol of.

This was stat­ed through his X ac­count (for­mer­ly Twit­ter).

Tel­lechea said: “As one of the most im­por­tant na­tion­al com­pa­nies in our coun­try, we have a sig­nif­i­cant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of his­tor­i­cal scope. I ask all work teams for max­i­mum ded­i­ca­tion to cre­ate the con­di­tions and lay the foun­da­tions for PDVSA Es­se­qui­bo, a new branch of our in­dus­try.”

His state­ment on X is a re­sponse to the re­cent de­cree signed by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro to im­me­di­ate­ly cre­ate the PDVSA Es­se­qui­bo and CVG Es­se­qui­bo di­vi­sion with a view to grant­i­ng a li­cense for the ex­plo­ration and ex­ploita­tion of oil, gas and min­er­als in the coun­try in the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ry with Guyana.

This mea­sure from the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment aris­es af­ter the Con­sul­ta­tive Ref­er­en­dum on the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, held on De­cem­ber 3, in which Venezue­lan vot­ers said yes five times to ques­tions with re­gards to the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

In re­lat­ed news, Venezue­lan news­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias re­port­ed on Tues­day that the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment has al­ready set up an of­fice in the town of Tumer­e­mo in the Venezue­lan state of Bo­li­var, where res­i­dents of the dis­put­ed re­gion can ob­tain Venezue­lan ID’s and pass­ports.

The El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias’ re­port said: “The di­rec­tor of Venezuela’s Pass­port Agency, Saime, Gus­ta­vo Viz­caíno, and the rec­tor of the CNE (elec­toral agency), Ros­al­ba Gil, be­gan the op­er­a­tion that es­ti­mates to serve about 400 peo­ple dai­ly dur­ing the con­fer­ence, which will take place un­til De­cem­ber 22 and will con­tin­ue its op­er­a­tions on Jan­u­ary 8. 2024.”

The re­port fur­ther stat­ed that the new Gov­er­nor ap­point­ed to man­age the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, Alex­is Ro­dríguez Ca­bel­lo, in­di­cat­ed that he had held a meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties of the area, in or­der to con­tin­ue strength­en­ing the ac­tion plan, re­solv­ing the most spe­cif­ic needs of the in­hab­i­tants of Es­se­qui­bo.

Last week, due to the ini­tia­tives of the Pres­i­dent of Brazil, Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va; the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CEL­CA) and the Com­mu­ni­ty of Caribbean States (Cari­com), di­rect talks be­tween Venezuela and Guyana will held on Thurs­day in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines.