TLDR? There was a 2nd tweet to that first one, but was way too long. Venezuela the bad guy here? Trying to take land that’s been in dispute for a long time?
I'm sure we'll get dragged in somehow. Bolsonaro was much more bold against Venezuela during his term and shared U.S. sentiment in regards to the dispute regarding power in the country (they had a presidential crisis that has led to two rival governments). There are a lot of themes at play here similar to those of Eastern Ukraine and Taiwan, so this will probably end up another U.S./China proxy war appetizer before the main dish. Lula (the new Brazilian prez) isn't Trump lite like Bolsonaro was, so he'll probably try to stick to diplomacy, but it looks like Venezuela isn't going to wait around for that.
I would blame the country that bankrupted itself into a situation that created a mass emigration event. This is an oil and minerals grab
Oil person nerding out below: As mentioned above, it’s all about Venezuela claiming Guyana’s offshore territory is actually their own after Guyana prospects have proved lucrative. Guyana’s production is still small, as it’s still relatively new, in the grand scheme of the oil market, but the largest offshore discovery in recent decades. Im no geologist but I assume if you go west into Venezuelan offshore territory they would find oil too. Except no one is dumb enough to try it as they nationalized their huge resources on land and didn’t pay anybody who helped produce it over the past decade. In the darkest times they squandered oil production to basically nothing from over 3 million barrels a day. And these were mainly black market sales / stolen oil, choking their economy, and are still paying for it to a) bring production back up online and b) bring companies like ConocoPhillips and schlumberger to reinvest and trust them again. CITGO is Venezuelas gas stations btw Source: I’m from Houston and was in the oil business for 15 years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/01/29/charting-the-decline-of-venezuelas-oil-industry/ So there are two related causes that have resulted in the steep decline of Venezuela’s oil production, despite the the country’s top rank in proved reserves. The first is the removal of expertise required to develop the country’s heavy oil. This started with the firing of PDVSA employees in 2003 and continued with pushing international expertise out of the country in 2007. (if you don't read the article Chavez fired all 19000 employees and replaced them with loyalists) Second, the Chávez government failed to appreciate the level of capital expenditures required to continue developing the country’s oil. This was in no small part due to inexperience among the Chávez loyalists that were now running PDVSA. When oil prices were high, Chávez funneled billions from the oil industry into the country’s social programs. But he failed to reinvest adequately in this capital-intensive industry. Following the 2007 expropriations, Venezuela’s oil production went on a steep decline. In 2018, Venezuela’s oil production fell to 1.5 million BPD, a decrease of more than 50% below 2006 levels.
All of the above. Corruption, mismanagement, greed. They really don’t need to be doing this. They have plenty of revenue opportunities in-country if they would quit stepping on their own dicks.
I’m sure Guyana’s military is almost non-existent but I’ve seen Venezuela’s military close up and if they meet any kind of competent resistance especially from Brazil, they won’t stand a chance. I’d be pretty surprised to see Venezuela actually get into a shooting skirmish by itself. It wouldn’t last long.
This is why most countries do JVs with majors or super majors when they have their Jed Clampett moment. The amount of money, infrastructure, capex and opex required to do this is truly insane. Especially when you factor in government corruption. See Petrobras. Hate to try and make the companies sound like the good guys but there is so much wealth at stake that if someone isn’t auditing operations shit gets weird fast.
No matter what happens, you can bet the losers will be the poor people who live on that land and in those forests and the environment, and the winners will be shithead politicians and filthy rich capitalists.
I wonder if India gets involved with this, given that Guyana is like a third of Indian origin and Hindu. (*once the British took it over they "imported" thousands of indentured labor from South Asia) Edit: here, I answered my own question: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/defence-the-eminence-of-guyana-and-india-ties-3060694/
Idk about India, but last I heard Brazil was moving men and resources to their border with Guyana (for what exactly I'm sure I done know)
If the US sent a carrier down there to loiter off the coast of Guyana wouldn't that be a pretty strong deterrent? Although a US-Exxon war would be pretty weird
Beeds07 Was just about to say, O lordy what the fuck is the CIA up too now when I saw this thread title
I am kind of curious what this is doing…. The Wolfhound is a pretty regular taxi cab for those tier 1 groups.
I saw someone say that the border of Guyana and Venezuela is not passable by an army so they’d have to attack overland through Brazil. I have my doubts Venezuela is capable of achieving this objective