Venezuela warned on Saturday of an alleged “false flag operation” to “attack” a platform belonging to the United States oil company ExxonMobil, which is producing crude oil with Guyana’s permission in waters that Caracas considers to be still demarcated.
In a broadcast on state-run VTV, Venezuela’s Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez linked ExxonMobil, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, opposition leader María Corina Machado, and US businessman Erik Prince to the operation.
“They thought and planned to attack this ExxonMobil platform in order to justify some kind of retaliation and action against Venezuela,” Rodriguez claimed.
“New evidence of this operation by ExxonMobil, Erik Prince, Machado, and Marco Rubio has reached our hands,” the Caribbean country’s hydrocarbons minister added.
The remarks come after Rubio warned Venezuela in March that a military attack on Guyana or ExxonMobil would be a big mistake and “a very bad day” for the government of Nicolás Maduro, backing Georgetown in its territorial dispute with Caracas over the Essequibo, an area of some 160,000 square kilometers (99,419 square miles) rich in oil and other natural resources.
Rubio then warned that the US “has a big navy and can go almost anywhere, anywhere in the world,” adding that he would not go into detail about what the US would do if Venezuela attacked Guyana.
On Saturday, Rodríguez stressed that Venezuela is the only country that is the “legitimate owner” of the Essequibo region and that the rest is “an invention.”
“This territorial dispute does not exist, it is an invention. We inherited this territory from Simón Bolívar, and we will defend it,” she said.
The official also called the Guyanese authorities “insolent and thieves” who are “stealing the oil and gas that belongs to Venezuelan men and women.”
“We are not afraid of them. Let them come, but if they dare, they will bite the dust,” she said.
On Saturday, the Venezuelan government presented Admiral Neil Villamizar as their candidate for governor of the Essequibo for the regional elections on May 25.
Villamizar noted that the “struggle is to regain sovereignty in this territory” and confirmed that Venezuela would achieve this “sooner or later.”
The border dispute over the Essequibo began with the Paris Arbitration Award of 1899, which gave sovereignty over the area to then-British Guyana.
Decades later, Venezuela annulled this ruling and signed the Geneva Agreement of 1966 with the United Kingdom, creating a commission to resolve the historical controversy, which has yet to materialize
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