SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
guyana
In the Caribbean, the Trump Admin Is Implementing a Dangerous Geopolitics of Oil
The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.
Apr 11, 2025
The Trump administration is organizing a network of energy-producing states in the Caribbean to provide the region with a steady supply of fossil fuels, despite the environmental risks.
Hoping to sideline Venezuela, the oil-rich country that once provided the Caribbean with affordable supplies of oil, the Trump administration is working to position other oil-rich countries as the region’s primary suppliers of energy. Administration officials are particularly focused on Guyana and Suriname, two oil-rich countries that they hope the region’s leaders will embrace as alternatives to Venezuela.
“The fact that now their own countries—Guyana, Suriname—are able to have and really surpass Venezuela in its oil production and be able to work with its neighbors there in the region is a huge opportunity for the Caribbean,” U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone said at a March 25 press briefing.
The Geopolitics of Oil in the Caribbean
Over the past two decades, the United States has engaged in a major rivalry with Venezuela for influence in the Caribbean. The U.S.-Venezuela rivalry has centered on oil, a fossil fuel that many Caribbean nations import to meet their energy needs.
Early in the 21st century, Venezuela took advantage of its vast oil reserves to become a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean. Under a program called Petrocaribe, Venezuela shared its oil wealth by providing Caribbean countries with shipments at low rates.
Many Caribbean countries embraced Petrocaribe. Not only did the Venezuelan program enable them to meet their energy needs, but it empowered them to begin developing their economies more independently of the United States, which has long been the dominant power in the region.
Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil.
For many years, the United States failed to offer alternatives to Petrocaribe. While Venezuela emerged as a powerful counterweight to U.S. power in the Caribbean, officials in Washington faced the possibility that formerly dependent countries would break free from the U.S. orbit.
With its influence waning, the United States eventually developed its own energy program. In 2014, the Obama administration introduced the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, which offered Caribbean countries technical assistance, financing for energy projects, and political support for regional energy planning.
U.S. officials presented the initiative as a way of bringing clean energy to the Caribbean. The program, they said, would empower Caribbean countries to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce their dependence on oil imports.
“You, the countries of the Caribbean, have a chance at the supply of energy that’s more resilient, more sustainable, cleaner, more affordable than you have ever, ever had,” Joe Biden told Caribbean leaders in 2015, when he was vice president in the Obama administration.
Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil. Believing that the United States could outmatch Venezuela on fossil fuels, they set out to find ways of achieving regional dominance in oil and natural gas.
One tactic was to promote U.S. fossil fuel exports to the Caribbean. “We have more oil and gas rigs running in the United States than all the rest of the world combined,” Biden boasted in 2015, when he was promoting the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative.
Another tactic focused on finding new sources of fossil fuels in the Caribbean. Several U.S. officials developed high hopes for Guyana, a South American country with large offshore oil deposits. In 2015, ExxonMobil announced significant discoveries, raising expectations that the country would become one of the region’s largest suppliers of oil.
As U.S. officials pushed alternative sources of fossil fuels, they also sought to end Venezuelan influence altogether. Acting consistently with the long history of U.S. coups and interventions in Latin America, the United States sought to bring down the Venezuelan government.
The first Trump administration made some of the most audacious moves, openly embracing regime change. From 2017 to 2019, it imposed severe sanctions on the country’s finances and oil industry to facilitate the collapse of the Venezuelan government.
Although the Venezuelan government survived the challenges, which continued into the Biden administration, the country experienced an unprecedented economic collapse. With its oil industry in decline and under restrictions by U.S. sanctions, Venezuela could no longer maintain Petrocaribe, diminishing its efforts to be a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean.
Trump Administration’s New Approach
Since the second Trump administration entered office in January, it has faced a new power dynamic in the Caribbean. With Venezuela having undergone one of the worst economic collapses for a country not at war, including a major decline in its oil industry, the administration finds itself in a position to restore U.S. supremacy in the Caribbean.
Moving to take advantage of the situation, the Trump administration has added a new dimension to the geopolitics of oil. Hoping to permanently sideline Venezuela and exclude it from the Caribbean altogether, it has begun to create a network of oil-producing countries that will provide the region with oil under U.S. direction.
“This is an opportunity,” Claver-Carone said at the March 25 press briefing. Caribbean countries “are going to be able to support each other, to be able to create an energy security framework, which has already changed the geopolitics of the region.”
Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has made several moves in pursuit of its goals. On March 24, President Trump issued an executive order that threatened to impose a tariff of 25% on any country that imports oil from Venezuela. Trump’s order put strong pressure on Caribbean leaders who have been hoping to revive Petrocaribe.
Second, the Trump administration has organized U.S. diplomatic visits to Caribbean nations. At the end of March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Guyana and Suriname, where he praised their leaders for embracing oil production and encouraged them to work together in a new network under U.S. leadership.
Surinamese President Chandrikapersad Santokhi said that he anticipated that Guyana and Suriname “will become important partners for the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere.”
Still, Venezuela remains in a position to challenge the United States. It is continuing to produce more oil than Guyana and Suriname combined, enabling it to maintain some exports to countries in the Caribbean. It is also claiming sovereignty over Essequibo, the western part of Guyana that includes the country’s offshore oil deposits.
The Trump administration has responded aggressively to Venezuela’s territorial claims, signaling that the U.S. military will intervene if Venezuela attempts to seize any of Guyana’s territory. Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.
Claver-Carone envisioned “a greater security cooperation agreement with Guyana—almost akin to what we’re working on with some of the Gulf states.”
The Trump administration’s strategy marks a major turning point for the Caribbean. Whereas the United States had once presented the region with options for shifting away from fossil fuels, it has now abandoned that approach. The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.
What the Trump administration is doing, in other words, is implementing a far more dangerous geopolitics of oil. As it moves to isolate Venezuela, it is pushing energy-dependent nations to embrace fossil fuels, regardless of the environmental consequences for the region and the world.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As ExxonMobil Moves In, Venezuela Boosts Forces Along Disputed Border With Guyana
"The current border impasse between Guyana and Venezuela is yet another example of United States imperialism's design to expand and usurp countries' natural resources around the world," said one observer.
Feb 09, 2024
As increased U.S. military aid to Guyana and ExxonMobil's oil exploration in contested waters exacerbate a territorial row between Venezuela and Guyana, satellite images made public on Friday purportedly showed increased Venezuelan military activity near the two countries' disputed border.
The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C.-based foreign policy think tank partly funded by the U.S. government and a bevy of Pentagon contractors, published satellite photos showing what the institution says is an "escalatory" buildup of Venezuelan land and naval forces near the Guyanese border.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday blamed the United States and U.S.-based ExxonMobil for inflaming tensions in contested Essequibo region after the Biden administration said earlier this week that it would help Guyana purchase new aircraft, helicopters, drones, and radar technology.
"The imperialist powers want unrestricted access and material and political control of the area and its resources."
Rodríguez condemned the "warmongering U.S. influence" and "the energy multinational [that] not only usurps the sovereignty of Guyana... but also seeks to protect its illicit operations in a sea that is pending demarcation."
ExxonMobil—which has been active in the region for more than 15 years—announced this week that it would ramp up exploration in an offshore area claimed by both Venezuela and Guyana. The Venezuelan government refuted a claim made Wednesday by Guyanese Foreign Minister Robert Persaud that the area to be explored by ExxonMobil "is within established Guyana waters in a fully demarcated area."
Rodríguez said these developments are clear violations of the Argyle Declaration, a December 2023 agreement between Caracas and Georgetown to renounce threats or use of force and settle disputes peacefully according to international law. The two countries reaffirmed their commitment to "peaceful resolution" during a summit in Brazil last month.
Venezuela has long claimed Essequibo, a resource-rich region along South America's northeastern coast that makes up around two-thirds of Guyana's territory that in 1899 was awarded by U.S., British, and Russian arbitrators to what was then the colony of British Guyana.
As Andreína Chávez Alava explained Thursday at Venezuela Analysis:
In recent months, Caracas has repeatedly denounced U.S. interference and military threats as the territorial dispute with Guyana escalated. In December, [U.S. Southern Command] carried out flight operations with the Guyana Defence Force and a British warship arrived in Guyanese waters for open sea defense exercises. In response, Venezuela held large-scale military drills of its own.
The December 3 Essequibo referendum held in Venezuela likewise raised tensions between the countries as Guyana interpreted the move as an attempt to forcefully annex the region. Voters overwhelmingly supported the country's sovereignty claim over the Essequibo and [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro ordered the creation of a new Venezuelan state called Guayana Esequiba as well as civil and military institutions for the disputed area.
Anti-imperialist voices have argued that Guyana is being used as a "pawn" by the United States. The U.S. has had a long history of meddling in Venezuelan affairs in service of its strategic and economic interests.
"The current border impasse between Guyana and Venezuela is yet another example of United States imperialism's design to expand and usurp countries' natural resources around the world and reinforce its geopolitical agenda," author Richard S. Dunn wrote Thursday for Covert Action.
"With the discovery of oil in the Essequibo region, the imperialist powers want unrestricted access and material and political control of the area and its resources," Dunn added. "The United States, Britain, France, and Canada are 'piling up' over each other for control of the oil-rich Essequibo."
Keep ReadingShow Less
US Involvement in a War Between Venezuela and Guyana Must Be Opposed
Big Oil is ready for another energy war—this time in Latin America—but that doesn't mean we should stand back and let it happen.
Dec 11, 2023
The United States has taken the first steps in becoming involved in a potential war between Venezuela and Guyana. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is claiming the territory of the oil-rich Essequibo region of neighboring Guyana, a claim recently backed by a referendum. Maduro then produced a new Venezuelan map that includes Essequibo as a new state. A 1996 agreement between the two countries gives the United Nations International Court of Justice the power to resolve disputes, but Maduro has rejected its involvement. All of this is seen as a prelude to military action to take over the province and its petroleum wealth.
President Irfaan Ali of Guyana declared, “Essequibo is ours, every square inch of it,” and sent troops to reinforce the country’s border with Venezuela. Brazil, which is a neighbor of both countries has also sent armed forces to the area. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva expressed his concern about the situation, saying, “We are going to treat it very carefully because what we don’t want here in South America is war.” St. Vincent and Grenadines President Ralph Gonsalvez and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres have persuaded Maduro and Ali to meet to discuss the issue, but Ali says he will not discuss the country’s borders and Maduro reiterates his claim to Essequibo.
Why is Maduro claiming Essequibo at this time?
Maduro, a virtual dictator, faces an election in 2024, and it is not clear that he could win a free and fair election. The country is racked by economic crisis, hampered by U.S. sanctions, and is experiencing mass emigration. Out of a population of 30 million in 2015, 7.7 million Venezuelans have migrated, principally to other South American countries, though almost a quarter of a million to the United States.
War? Not yet. But the left must be watching...
In the last election in 2018, Maduro won only after most opposition parties and candidates were declared ineligible, in a process riddled with irregularities, and with relatively few voters going to the polls. In 2019, conservative challenger Juan Guidó claimed to be interim president and was recognized by over 60 countries, including the United States, throwing the country into a years-long crisis, though Guidó failed to take power.
In the coming election, Maduro will face Maria Corina Machado, an economic conservative and member of the opposition party in the Venezuelan National Assembly. She won in the opposition’s unofficial primary election, in which, remarkably, 2.4 people million participated. Machado has already been disqualified from holding public office because of her support for U.S. sanctions. The U.S. government says sanctions won’t be lifted unless the opposition parties can participate in the elations.
Claiming Essequibo allows Maduro to offer the promise of economic improvement. A war would provide him with a chance to wrap himself in the flag, declare a national emergency, and postpone the elections. But he may find himself in a war not only with Guyana but perhaps also with the United States.
The U.S. Southern Command which oversees Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, is already conducting joint flight operations with the Guyana Defense Forces. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told President Ali that he could count on Washington’s support “for Guyana’s sovereignty and our robust security and economic cooperation.” Maduro has criticized Guyana for involving the United States.
Since the election of the leftist government of President Hugo Chávez in 1999, the United States has opposed Venezuela. In 2006, President George W. Bush imposed sanctions on Venezuela for its failure to cooperate in counter-terrorism and anti-drug efforts. President Barack Obama imposed further sanctions in 2014 because of Venezuelan human rights violations. The Donald Trump administration expanded the sanctions, though President Joseph Biden has subsequently moderated them, permitting the sale of oil. The U.S. recognition of Guidó as interim president was an attempt to overthrow Chavez’s successor Maduro.
Already involved in supporting Ukraine and Israel, the Biden administration would no doubt like to avoid another war. Since the discovery of enormous off-shore oil fields in Guyana, American and other foreign petroleum companies, such as Esso Exploration & Production Guyana, a descendant of ExxonMobil and Standard Oil, already have operations in Essequibo, and the oil companies have always played a large role in U.S. foreign policy.
War? Not yet. But the left must be watching, prepared to oppose U.S. involvement.Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular