Almost two months after United Nations Secretary General António Guterres referred the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy to the World Court for judicial settlement, the coalition Government is currently working on its pleadings to submit to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“You will hear later in the month or early next month exactly when it’s going to be submitted. The lawyers are working on it,” a senior Government official told Guyana Times International.
The official went on to reveal that Guyana has already selected the panel of lawyers to represent its interest before the World Court. “These are international lawyers who have been working on such things elsewhere and then, of course, there is going to be a local team,” he added.
According to the Government official, the Foreign Affairs Ministry is currently working on building that local team. He noted that the Ministry has since enlisted the help of diplomats and historians to work on the case.
This publication was told that the border controversy case can take as much as six years before litigation is completed.
After Venezuela reignited the border controversy, with new claims to Guyana’s territory back in 2015, the coalition Government has maintained that the issue was a legal one and needed to be settled via a legal process.
After some two years of failed mediation, the UN Secretary General, on January 31 this year, announced in a statement that he has sent the matter to the ICJ for resolution, a decision the Spanish-speaking nation had not accepted.
According to the UN Secretary General’s spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, enough progress was not made towards solution of the controversy and as a result, Secretary General Guterres referred the matter to the ICJ. This is in accordance with the framework left by his predecessor, Ban Ki-moon. However, Guterres did not rule out the continuation of the good offices process of the UN to complement court proceedings.
The border controversy gained new life when oil giant ExxonMobil announced in 2015 that it had found oil in Guyana. Venezuela has staunchly been against oil exploration in Guyana’s Stabroek Block, where multiple oil deposits were found by ExxonMobil, and has since renewed its claim to the Essequibo region, which represents two-thirds of Guyana’s territory.
In the meanwhile, ExxonMobil is continuing its successful exploration activities, making its seventh discovery of “high-quality” commercial oil offshore Guyana last month. According to the company, this will help bring Guyana’s production to more than 500,000 barrels per day when oil production commences in two years’ time.
Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman had told a gathering of members of the local legal fraternity during the Guyana Oil and Gas Law Training Development Conference two weeks ago that preparations were already underway for first oil in 2020.
In fact, he disclosed that Government’s fast-tracking of oil production is “inextricably linked” with the border controversy with neighbouring Venezuela. He said that Guyana has been strategically pushing for first oil in 2020 in light of the claim by its western neighbour over waters offshore Guyana that are being explored by the US oil giant.
The Nicolás Maduro Government had issued a decree in late May 2015, claiming most of Guyana’s territorial waters, including the Liza Field located some 120 miles off Clonbrook-Mahaica. That decree, which extended into Surinamese and Barbadian waters, was subsequently withdrawn.
