Venezuela Intercepts Oil Survey Ship, Fueling Border Row With Guyana
23 Décembre 2018 - 8:47AM
Dow Jones News
By Kejal Vyas
An oil exploration ship contracted by Exxon Mobil Corp. and the
government of Guyana was approached Saturday by Venezuela's navy,
rekindling a border dispute between the two nations and pushing the
U.S. major to halt research work in one of its most-promising
energy prospects.
Owned by Norway's Petroleum Geo-Services and bearing a Bahamian
flag, the Ramform Tethys seismic-survey vessel was intercepted by a
Venezuelan navy ship Saturday morning in Guyanese waters, about 90
miles from a provisional border, Guyanese authorities said.
PGS and Exxon did not give further details of the encounter but
said the research ship, which had been acquiring the 3-D seismic
data needed for drilling, stopped work and headed east with its 70
crew members. The Venezuelans did not board the ship, according to
its operators.
Ten offshore oil discoveries since 2015 by an Exxon-led
consortium, accounting for 5 billion barrels of crude, have turned
Guyana, one of South America's poorest nations, into one of the
region's hottest oil frontiers. But the finds have also resurfaced
a simmering, century-old border controversy in which Venezuela
claims two-thirds of its neighbor's territory.
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejects this illegal,
aggressive and hostile act," Guyana Foreign Minister Carl Greenidge
said in a statement, calling Venezuela "the real threat to Guyana's
economic development."
Exxon said the seismic operations that it was performing under a
Guyanese government license have been paused until they can be
safely continued. "Our main concern is for the safety of crew
members and others in the area," a spokeswoman for the Irving,
Texas company said.
There was no immediate response from Caracas. In the past,
President Nicolás Maduro has slammed Exxon's offshore oil
operations in Guyana as a provocation. In recent weeks, the
president has made repeated promises to strengthen Venezuela's
military defense as relations fray with the U.S. and Latin American
countries that have largely condemned the Maduro administration's
slide into authoritarian rule.
Mr. Greenidge said he would inform the United Nations of a
breach on his country's national sovereignty.
Meanwhile, the government in Georgetown is facing a potentially
greater political battle on the domestic front. Guyana's parliament
late Friday approved a no-confidence vote in the administration of
President David Granger, triggering early elections in March, just
as the country prepares for the start of commercial oil pumping in
2020.
Mr. Granger, who has been out of the public eye since being
diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in November, took office in
2015 with a political coalition promising to tackle corruption and
ending decades of tensions between the descendants of African
slaves and East Indian laborers who make up Guyana's two largest
ethnic groups.
But the government has faced criticism from detractors for
failing to renegotiate a deal that many Guyanese see as too
generous to the foreign oil partners and say leaves little for the
nation's development. President Granger's aides have defended the
deal as the best option for a country with virtually no experience
in the oil industry.
The crude deposits could be a game changer for Guyana, a former
British colony with less than 800,000 people and an economy
dependent on agriculture, mining and lumber.
Guyana's government, however, says resolving the border dispute
is paramount to its economic aspirations.
A Paris arbitration tribunal in 1899 had set the internationally
recognized border between both countries, but Venezuela 60 years
later rejected the boundary saying it was cheated.
In 2013, Venezuela's navy briefly detained a Malaysian-owned
seafloor survey ship hired by Guyana and the U.S. oil company
Anadarko along with its crew.
Efforts by a U.N. commission to settle the border issue fell
apart earlier this year, leading it to send the case to the
International Court of Justice.
Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 23, 2018 02:32 ET (07:32 GMT)
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