Energy companies should start exploration in “our Guyana Esequiba,” President Nicolas Maduro has said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro shows a map of the country, which includes the ‘Guyana Esequiba’ province. © AFP / Venezuelan Presidency Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has displayed an updated map showing a resource-rich territory disputed with neighboring Guyana as a part of Venezuela. The map including ‘Guyana Esequiba’ province will be published and distributed in schools and universities, Maduro said on Tuesday. A law on the creation of the new province has already been submitted to the country’s parliament, according to the president. The area that Guyana calls ‘Essequibo’ has been a bone of contention between the two countries since the 19th century. In 1899, US arbitration assigned the region to Guyana, a British colony at the time, but Venezuela never accepted the decision. In 2018, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres referred the dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), with the Hague-based body ruling in April that it had jurisdiction in the case. On Sunday, a referendum in Venezuela returned a result overwhelmingly supporting Maduro’s government on the status of ‘Guyana Esequiba’. The vote confirmed that Caracas should reject the 1899 arbitration decision as well as the ICJ’s jurisdiction over the matter. It also endorsed a plan to offer Venezuelan citizenship to the residents of the Guyana-administered territory. New map of the Bolivarian Republic of 🇻🇪 #Venezuela.👇Result of the Consultative Referendum of December 3, 2023. pic.twitter.com/gPugJWlq0S Venezuela’s state-run companies will Maduro said. Any other firms operating in the area will have three months to withdraw from the territory, he explained, adding that a zone of integral defense of ‘Guayana Esequiba’ would be created. Read more A consortium led by US company Exxon Mobil started producing oil off Guyana’s coast in late 2019 under a license from the Guyanese government, with exports beginning the next year. Later on Tuesday, Guyanese President Irfaan Ali said Maduro was showing for the ICJ, which said last week that it forbade Venezuela from taking any action to change the status quo of the region. Ali announced. The country would be contacting the UN Security Council and the ICJ concerning the development on Wednesday morning, he added. insisting that Georgetown has the support of the international community in its dispute with Caracas.
