https://www.zerohedge.com/mark...rriers-guyana-border

After constant jawboning for over two months, Venezuela is now backing up its threats to annex part of oil-rich Guyana and secure access to some of the world’s largest oil deposits by "moving light tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats and armored carriers to the two countries’ border", the WSJ reported noting that this is set to rapidly turn into a new security headache for the administration of the now officially senile US president.

The deployment, which was visible in satellite images made public Friday and in videos recently posted by Venezuela’s military on social media, is a "major escalation" in Caracas’s attempts to obtain some leverage over its neighbor’s newfound energy reserves, even though any military confrontation will result in an international response that promptly ousts Maduro. It comes despite a written agreement reached in December between the Venezuelan dictator and Guyanese President Irfaan Ali that denounced the use of force and called for a commission to address territorial disputes.

ccording to the WSJ, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, using satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies and shared exclusively with the Journal, found that in late 2023 and January Venezuela moved armored vehicles and what appear to be light tanks to Anacoco Island on the Cuyuni River just yards from Guyana. Construction work is also taking place, signaling the expansion of a base there.

In Venezuela’s Atlantic port of Güiria, the country deployed between Jan. 18 and Jan. 22 at least three Iranian-made Peykaap III antiship guided-missile patrol boats, as is visible in the satellite images used by CSIS, the Washington think tank. The regime’s military set up two Russian-built Buk M2E antiaircraft systems in Güiria on Jan. 31, almost 400 miles east of their usual position near Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. And a small coast-guard post in Punta Barima, 50 miles from Guyana-controlled Essequibo, is being revamped into a naval and air base.

Those deployments are within easy reach of the Stabroek oil block run by Exxon and its partners, Chevron
and China’s Cnooc, off the coast of Guyana, where production has soared to 645,000 barrels of crude a day, not far off what Venezuela produces.

The deployment and increasingly bellicose language from Caracas has come as Guyana emerges as one of the world’s hottest energy frontiers following offshore oil discoveries by an Exxon Mobil-led consortium. The former British colony, population 800,000, has a defense force of only 3,000 service members, pushing the government to work more closely with the U.S. to enhance its defensive capabilities.

Confirmation of the military deployment comes one day after Venezuela said it would respond in a “forceful” way to Exxon’s plans to drill in the disputed Essequibo region off the coast of Guyana.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said that Exxon’s plan to drill exploration wells in the region will be met with a “proportional, forceful and rightful response,” according to a post on social-media platform X. Padrino said the area is a “maritime space that rightfully belongs to Venezuela.”

The oil giant said it will drill new wells west of the Liza discovery and close to Venezuelan territorial waters, Exxon Guyana President Alistair Routledge told Demerara Waves. The dispute is “not inhibiting that activity in our plans,” he said.

Padrino responded that “If ExxonMobil has a private security company represented by the Southern Command and a small branch in the government of Guyana, good for them, but in the maritime space that rightfully belongs to Venezuela, they will receive a proportional, forceful and rightful response." Well, Exxon may not have a security company now, but it has billions of dollars more than Venezuela does and if it has to hire a mercenary army to defeat the banana republic's advances, it can easily do so.

Since late last year, the Venezuelan government, which has an army of up to 150,000 active soldiers has ratcheted up claims to the Essequibo, a mostly jungle-covered region that makes up two-thirds of Guyana.

“We are not surprised by the bad faith of Venezuela,” Guyana’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal in response to questions about the military deployment. “We are disappointed, not surprised.”

What is amusing is that the war-footing comes just as the senile occupant of the White House has been making overtures to Venezuela's dictator in hopes that Maduro will flood the US with cheap oil, thus keeping gas prices low ahead of the elections, which has fast emerged as Biden's only chance of winning; needless to say, should oil prices spike, Biden is done. It gets even funnier though, because while on one hand Maduro has been maintaining a dialog with the US due to his leverage over Biden, at the same time, the country has said it is boosting its defenses in response to the U.S. military’s exercises in Guyana in December and the U.K.’s deployment of a small antinarcotics vessel, the HMS Trent, in Guyanese waters.

more at link

Weakness is very provocative, and Joe Biden is very, very weak.

We need to pay more attention to things south of the border like this.
They are the real root cause of the illegal immigration problems we're facing and a more direct threat to our country.

Guyana is interesting. It had a very low GDP prior to the offshore oil discovery in 2015, and now they have Top 20 oil reserves in the world. I believe they're now Top 30 oil production and trying to be Top 20 by end of decade. It was an ExxonMobil discovery, and they partnered with Hess who was recently bought by Chevron. Both are in the top 10 US companies in terms of revenue and both feature Guyana prominently in their 10k's (XOM and HES).

Guyana is an offshore oil play producing into FPSOs (basically, a super tanker with oil & gas processing plant on the top deck). The produce into the FPSO and transload the oil into another super tanker so nothing goes to shore. My Googlfu says that the oilfield is 125 miles offshore. In other words, a ground invasion would be meaningless and US Naval presence would go a long way.

OPEC would love to get Guyana to join OPEC+ (non-OPEC countries such as Russia who participate in supply cuts) as they see places like Guyana as a threat to their ability to manipulate the price of oil. A weak US response could drive them into OPEC+. Frankly, I could see Russia stirring up Venezuela just to mess with US economy.

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Originally posted by tatortodd:
OPEC would love to get Guyana to join OPEC+ (non-OPEC countries such as Russia who participate in supply cuts) as they see places like Guyana as a threat to their ability to manipulate the price of oil. A weak US response could drive them into OPEC+. Frankly, I could see Russia stirring up Venezuela just to mess with US economy.

Would be interesting to peek behind the intelligence curtain to see if Guyana had any clue that Venezuela would take an aggressive posture and position themselves for an invasion or, it was dismissed as Western/Anglo conspiracy thinking.
The UK deployed a patrol boat however they're treading carefully trying not to appear like Guyana's colonial protector but, at the same time trying to be responsive to a call for assistance. They've bumped-up their joint-exercises but, not sure it'll deter Maduro's ambitions. A US appearance will renew the cries of Monroe Doctrine/Western Hemisphere hegemony and would rally the Bolivarian-romantics in Latin America to Venezuela's cause.

quote:

Would be interesting to peek behind the intelligence curtain to see if Guyana had any clue that Venezuela would take an aggressive posture and position themselves for an invasion or, it was dismissed as Western/Anglo conspiracy thinking.

I wouldn't know anything about intelligence services, but there was some oil & gas scuttlebutt a few years back about disputed international border offshore. However, the US producers were intentionally avoiding the disputed blocks (i.e. none of the current or planned oil production is in the disputed blocks).