Maduro’s land grab in Guyana is a cynical ploy to hang on to power in Venezuela
It also seems clear that the dispute, which centres on control of the Essequibo region in western Guyana, a sparsely populated area the size of Greece that constitutes about two-thirds of Guyanese territory, is mostly about oil. In 2015, the US oil giant, ExxonMobil, discovered a big field off Guyana’s coast, largely within its exclusive economic zone.
The discovery has swollen Guyana’s estimated oil reserves to about 11bn barrels.
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