Venezuela adds disputed oil-rich region to its map

Energy companies should start exploration in “our Guyana Esequiba,” President Nicolas Maduro has said

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