Guyana-Venezuela border tensions soar over disputed oil-rich Essequibo region
- UN to hold emergency meeting at Guyana’s request on Venezuelan claim to a vast oil-rich Essequibo region
- Region abuts the border with Venezuela, which wants to grant exploration licenses for oil deposits there
Calls mounted for calm to prevail as Venezuela said it saw a “provocation” in joint US-Guyana military exercises and vowed to pursue the “recovery” of an oil-rich region both neighbours claim as their own.
The UN Security Council called an urgent meeting for Friday on the fast-escalating row that Guyana said “threatens international peace and security”.
The United States, through National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, on Thursday urged the sides to find a diplomatic solution to the territorial dispute, saying “we don’t want to see this come to blows”.
But Washington provoked an angry response from Caracas by announcing via the embassy in Georgetown it would hold joint “flight operations within Guyana” as part of “routine engagement and operations to enhance security partnership” with its ally.
“This unfortunate provocation by the United States in favour... of ExxonMobil in Guyana is another step in the wrong direction,” Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said on X.
