Why Venezuela wants to invade Guyana

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imagine being so bad at ruling the country that you, despite having THE largest oil reserves, have to invade your neighbors to take away their oil

Wait wait wait... a big oil rich country run by a dictator, threatening to invade another smaller oil rich country nearby... I have seen this one before, it's a 90's classic!

I lived in northern Brazil for almost 20 years, about two hours away from Santa Elena in Venezuela, and an hour away from Lethem in Guyana. In the early 2000s Venezuela was the place Brazilians would go to buy cheap (almost free) gas, food in bulk and even electronics for a fraction of the price being charged in Brazil. People would drive to Margarita to spend their holidays in the Caribbean and Venezuela used to be a “nice” place to visit. Guyana, on the other hand, was hardly on the map. Lethem, the border town, didn’t even have paved roads, their stores would sell mostly very cheap, plasticky Chinese products. I even saw goats on the roads multiple times. I kid you not. With time, Venezuela started deteriorating and instead of Brazilians going there to shop, they would go to Brazil to buy food and even gas. Lethem paved its roads, their stores grew larger and started selling better products, attracting more consumers and even people from further Brazilian states like Amazonas. In the meantime, tens of thousands of Venezuelan refugees flooded the streets of Boa Vista, the largest Brazilian city close to their border. Last time I checked the city went from 250k people to about 400k in the span of a few years, a very large of those living in government funded shelters and even on the streets. Criminality went up, public hospitals which used to work well, started seeing massive backlogs, the educational system became stressed and the sentiment towards Venezuelans started to sour. There’s a lot more to the story, of course, but the main reason for my comment is to emphasize how Venezuela and their socialist/populist governments managed to destroy what used to be a fairly decent place to live. There’s no annexing and discovery of oil that could make up for a complete lack of competence at management.

One important thing to note is that Guyana’s oil is ‘light, sweet’ crude, which means that it is relatively easy to extract and contains a disproportionately large amount of the most valuable fractions—those which are used to make gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuel, for example. Venezuela’s oil is quite ‘heavy’ (some call it ‘extra-heavy’)—it’s generally much harder to extract due to its relative density—and ‘sour’ (meaning high in sulfur content) by international standards. Oil like theirs requires much more refining time in Fluid Catalytic Cracking and Hydrodesulfurization units to produce the most valuable distillates. It is much harder for their oil to compete in the areas of highest demand as a result. There are still good uses for their oil, particularly for a developing nation, as asphalt is made from heavy oil and sulfur is needed for fertilizer production. It is simply not as profitable as others. For a petrostate like Venezuela, where oil counts for more than 90 percent of exports and more than half of fiscal revenue, every bit of margin matters greatly. Violence is never the answer for issues like this, but I can see why Venezuela’s government would be in distress at the moment. They get hit with years of unrest and hyperinflation (not to mention the pandemic) only to have to deal with their main source of income being threatened right as things seem to calm down. I do not envy them.

"Put America and oil together and u will get combustible reaction" dang😂 as always, best closing statement.

'When there is no more to plunder from your own people, go and see what the neighbors have...'

Creating external conflict to distract from internal conflict. The everlasting classic.

Invading would be like taking sms-loans to fix your broken economy. Works for like 5 seconds, then you have more problems than before.

Venezuelan here. The sentiment around my circle and what most of the opposition thinks is that this is way kore abojt gaining political points than any benefit from the oil. As stated in the video, the governments capacity to run the oil i distry is laughable, so there is little to gain by increasing oil reserves. What is a big possibility is declaring a state of emergency or war in order to gain the political power to stop this year's elections, which is what I personally think is the true goal behind all this since launching a full scale invasion that has no chance of succeding wojld very much sour the military against the government.

I want to point a couple errors in the video, the Georgetown colony was Dutch, and the British bought it after Venezuelan independence.

14:10 What makes the economically collapsed Venezuela think that it would gain the diplomatic or military support of Russia while it is engaging a war in Ukraine and relying its economy heavily on the PRC?

You’ve forgotten all the island airports nearby that could be used by the US Air Force as bases. Flying out of Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands would be even easier than a carrier. And sinking whatever landing ships Venezuela puts together would be trivial. In fact, defending against a Venezuelan invasion wouldn’t even require the USAF. It could be done by the US Coast Guard.

I have a feeling for Maduro this would end up being more akin to what happened with Galtieri in Argentina who invaded the Falklands to give himself a political boost. Might seem like a good idea initially, but invasions are infinitely more difficult than they look on paper.

Love how Venezuela just claims part of Surinam's Exclusive Maritime Zone just the same.

Sooo Venezuela’s issue is that they so horrifically mismanaged their economy and nationalized oil rigs that they literally reached a point where they could not afford to operate some of them. Would taking more oil rigs from other countries even help?

I really enjoyed this NordVPN video, sponsored by Venezula's planned annexaion of Guyana

Venezuela hasn't been able to develop their own oil reserves, or even keep their petroleum infrastructure in working condition since Chavez fired the people who knew how to keep all of it running, and drove them out of the country. Oilfield development companies will only deal with them on a cash basis due to their history of nationalizing petroleum infrastructure. Even if Venezuela did take over the Esequibo region, the likelihood they would be able to develop the petroleum reserves is virtually nil.

My god, CaspianReport is easily on my Top 5 Youtube channels of all time. This is S+ tier content, keep it up Shirvan!

A bit late this video this issued has been settled., and Venezuela had no chance in winning this one as Guyana has very powerful friends.