Pushkin, lady, good gentlemen, starts pleasure to welcome you to Georgetown, Guyana.
A few years ago, our old producer is there of entry and I took a reporting trip to Guyana. We did a whole season on the country, just as it was becoming a brand new oil superpower.
Right now.
Even there are parts of the east coast, and even here during spring tides, you should see the waves coming over the top of the wall. So any kind of rise in sea level, we're in trouble.
That was salad Or, one of our guides in Guyana, giving us a tour of the sea wall surrounding Georgetown, the country's capital.
How much do you keep building this wall up? At some point we're going to have to think about moving, and the government is already about it, actually moving the capital back into where the big airport is.
Ninety percent of the country will need to be moved in the next decade or so due to sea level rise exacerbated by climate change. But the government of Guyana wasn't embracing oil because they thought climate change was a hoax. No, they said they were embracing it to pay for climate adaptation. I asked doctor Troy Thomas, a professor at the University of Guyana who's questioned the government's decision to allow massive amounts of drilling offshore, what he thought of this idea.
I want him to show me one example where that has happened, and then show me another example where Guyana was forced to lead on something and develop something new. And should the rest of the world show me those two things side by side. In fact, show me one of them first and then I might be interested. Neither of those two things have happened, and so that to me, and it doesn't make sense. You've got to release more into the atmosphere in order to have the ability to
clean it up. And if we look at the rate to which you know there is no cap on exploration, that's something that we are talking about low carbon development, but petroleum exploration and development is open ended. And I've been asking the question, maybe not loudly enough, but how much is enough?
How much is enough? It's a great question. If you haven't listened to that season already, go check it out. We get into everything it does and doesn't mean for Guyana to be a big oil state, what it means for the people who live there, all of that for our purposes today, though, I'm going to go back to Salvador and something he told Sarah and I about the
early days of Guiana's founding as a country. He and his colleague Jamal led us through a small museum in downtown Georgetown, stopping occasionally to give us some backstory.
So, as you know, Guyana was actually spelt g u i n e. At one point of time under the British name, you got the true Guanas and what they used to call British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, and French Guiana. Dutch Guiana is surnam what else is here?
And Spanish Gas here on our Knaco Spanish Caana became part of Venezuela, Portuguese Ganda became part of Brazil. So you've got French now, French, Dutch and English. But the border got changed.
At this point, Salvador stood in front of a big map of the country to show how these former colonies had been divided into new countries.
To Brazil. And we gave them all of this to Venezuela. Now do you claim that this should be border? So two thirds again they say belongs to them.
Not no way, sorry, here.
Not happening.
In case you missed that, he's saying that Venezuela is laying claimed to a portion of Guyana. That border dispute has been going on for decades, but the twenty fifteen discovery of oil in Guyana really got it going again. By that point, Venezuela had kicked out the foreign oil companies. We interrupt this program to bring you a breaking news story.
US oil giant Exon strikes oil in Guyana.
Exon was the company that felt most screwed over by Venezuela's final nationalization of oil. The government had said, hey, you guys can stay only as minority partners, and Chevon said okay, but Exon said no way, and its assets in the country were seized. It already knew at the time, of course, that it was camping out on oil permits in Guyana that it had had since the nineties.
The reason why we are famous know is that Venezuela has denied the US companies. They're rightful share, whatever that may be.
This is Alfred Boulai, a longtime engineer and energy expert in Guyana. Today he works for Transparency Institute Guyana, which pushes for increased government transparency. He says, there had been exploratory oil drilling off and on in Guyana for decades before Exxon's big announcement.
I knew it was oil being grilled, and certain knowledgeable people knew that, particularly mister Borlam in the nineteen seventies, the former president. He knew these things.
That's for President Forbes Burnham. The country officially gained independence from Britain in nineteen sixty six. In the lead up to independence, the most popular party was the People's Progressive Party the PPP. At that point, it was a cross racial party led by two men, one of Indian descent, Chetty Juggan, the other of African descent. Forbes Burnham, like a lot of other South American political leaders at the time, they were both leftists, and they had strong opinions about
who should own and benefit from Guyana's natural resources. It's people. Also, like a lot of South American countries, Guyana was on the CIA's radar at the time, and they had strong opinions about which of these two men they'd prefer to see in charge of so many resources. That was Burnham, the one who didn't spend quite so much time throwing back Mohidos with Fidel Castro. As they have done in so many countries, the CIA leaned on racial differences to
split the party in two and then backed Burnham. Despite its large stores of oil and relative stability compared to some of its neighbors, Guyana wasn't a big target for its oil for a while because it sat beneath the ocean floor some forty miles off the coast. So from the seventies to the early two thousands, the big US oil companies were concentrating on Venezuela.
So I am absolutely sure that they knew there was oil there and just waited, Venezuela is going to play bad. Then they said, well, okay, we have oil elsewhere, and then negotiated a very sweet deal. And so the people who knew about oil knew these things, but the general public didn't. I have a personal theory that the oil is all connected, and that's one of the reasons the Venezuelans don't really want drilling taking place here, because let me drill there is already thinking.
If you're hearing a lot of things that sound familiar, it sound like a little bit about what's happening today with the US with Exon and with Venezuela. Yeah, I know after the break, what everything the US and Exon we're getting up to in Guyana had to do with the invasion of Venezuela years later, and how it all connects back to the topic of this miniseries, fossil fueled fascism. I maybe Westervelt and this is drilled stay with us.
I never really stopped reporting a story once I've started, so even though it's been a while since my last reporting trip to Guyana, I keep tabs on the news there, try to keep up with sources all of that, and I was surprised when suddenly one day last year, I saw a tweet from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio praising Guyana for taking action to crack down on narco trafficking. In the press release that he quote tweeted, the Guyanese
government had specifically namechecked a gang. I knew the US government had just invented the Carfel de los Soles in much the same way that the Trump administration has lumped anyone with progressive politics under the umbrella Antifa and designated it as a terrorist organization. Garfel de los Soles is an idea, the idea of government corruption, of government officials looking the other way at drug traffickers, maybe even taking bribes from them, but it doesn't exist as an actual entity.
I knew for my time in Guyana that they had beef with Venezuela, and that that beef was about oil, and that the oil economy in Guyana was tied more to one company and any other Exonmobile, and that that company also had beef with Venezuela. Time to dig into what had been going on with Guyana and Venezuela lately turned out a lot.
Venezuela held a vote asking whether it should take over a portion of neighboring Guyana.
This was the first story I found on NPR's State of the World, and it was from all the way back in late twenty twenty three. Venezuela voted on.
What now Venezuela's referendum was over a jungle region called Essequibo that makes up the western two thirds of Guyana.
Okay, I knew that Essequibo was where the oil is in Guyana, so this was starting to make a little more sense. Still, they had a vote on annexing two thirds of a neighboring country.
On Sunday, Venezuela's autocratic president, Nicolas Maduro, held a news conference urging Venezuelans to throng to the polling station. They were asked to approve or reject five ballot questions. The most provocative proposal was to annex Sekibo. Guyana's Prime Minister Mark Phillips said in a radio interview that his country was preparing for the worst.
You go to the war with what you have. We are prepared to defend Guyana with.
What to we have.
Venezuelans did vote to annex sekey Bow, or whatever a vote under Maduro was worth, it was enough to mobilize the international community. The International Court of Justice announced that it has jurisdiction over the border dispute and ask both countries to remain calm until it could issue a ruling.
Ending a final decision in the case, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela shall refrain from taking any action which would modify this situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute, whereby the Cooperative Republic of Guyana administers and exercises control over that area.
Meanwhile, various governments pushed for peace talks between Guyana and Venezuela, which did eventually happen and resulted in a written agreement between the two called the Argyle Accords. Almost everyone seemed to immediately ignore this agreement. It was supposed to be
a cooling off period. They agreed to not do anything more around this border dispute until the International Corps could make a decision, but almost immediately Guyana asked the UK for a show of military support, which it provided it's in a warship to the Guyana Venezuela border. A couple weeks later. Things calmed down for a couple of months, but in April twenty twenty four, Maduro signed the bill
declaring Sekibo part of Venezuela into law. He took a little break after that for a little bit to make sure that he could secure reelection, but in January twenty twenty five, Maro back at it, this time appointing a governor for the new Venezuelan state of Essekibo. For a minute, it looked like the Trump administration wasn't all that concerned about it.
The new Trump team didn't seem to mind signaling a Rapprochemont with Maduro in exchange for Caracas agreeing to accept flights of Venezuelans deported from the US. Trump, though now says Maduro isn't taking back deportees fast enough.
Then in February, Trump cut off an economic lifeline to Maduro's government, an exemption that Biden had passed to allow Chevron to export Venezuelan oil.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that a permit which has allowed US energy giant Chevron to export Venezuelan oil will be canceled.
Venezuela has been under strict US sanctioned since twenty twenty, instituted by the first Trump administration in an effort to
topple authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro. The permit was issued in twenty twenty two by the Biden administration on the condition that Venezuela hold free and feral elections, But in twenty twenty four, after banning the strongest candidate to challenge him, Maduro claimed victory for a third term in office, despite significant evidence that he had in fact lost Venezuela's political opposition estimates that Chevron's exemption from those sanctions has provided
the Maduro government with roughly four billion dollars.
Remember in the first episode of this series where we talked about the Redline Agreement and how it bred this entitlement amongst the oil companies and the governments that supported them. Well, at the same time all that was happening in the Middle East, oil companies were doing the exact same thing in Latin America. Standard Oil of New Jersey, the company known today as Exonmobile, was the first foreign oil company to explore in Venezuela. It began drilling in nineteen thirteen.
There Shell soon followed suit and hit him made finned in nineteen twenty two. By nineteen thirty three, foreign companies Golf Royal, Dutch Shell, and Standard Oil controlled ninety eight percent of the Venezuelan oil market. And then Venezuela did the unthinkable. It took it back. In nineteen forty three, it passed the Hydrocarbons Law, which required foreign oil companies
to give half their oil profits to the state. In two thousand and seven, Googo Chavez decreed that all oil projects in Venezuela must be majority owned by the national oil company. That's when Exon left and Chevron stayed. This brings US up to speed all the way to March twenty twenty five, when Marutro crossed a red line.
Reports emerged of a Venezuelan Coastguard vessel in Guyana's Exclusive economic zone, specifically in the starboard bloc, a site crucial for offshore oil operations. Social media quickly spread images and videos of the vessel and Venezuelan soldiers communicating with the Prosperity floating, production, storage and offloading vessel before moving on to other units in the area.
Venezuela Is sent a coast Guard ship to Excellent vessels offshore and told them they shouldn't be operating there. Here's part of their message to the ships.
According to present your present a geographical position, you are operating in the eclosive economic loan of Venezuela, the public Bolivianianublic of Venezuela.
According to your present geographical position, you are operating in the exclusive economic zone of the Bolvarian Republic of Venezuela. Diana's president, doctor Irfan Ali, was outraged.
The patrol vessel transmitted a radio message declaring that the FBSO was operating in what it termed disputed international waters.
Soon after the guy Inese government confirmed the incursion, and President Doctor Eir Finale swiftly activated diplomatic channels and condemned the actions as a violation of both international law and agreements made between the two nations.
We have reached out to all our international partners, and all our international partners have responded positively.
None more so than the US, which issued a statement that Manduro would suffer consequences for his actions. They also sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deliver this message in person a couple of weeks later. It would be a very bad day for Venezuelan regime.
If they were to attack Diana or attack exon Mobile or anything like.
It would be a very bad day or a very bad week for them, and it will not in.
Well for them.
The very next day after that speech that Rubio gave, the US and Guyana conducted joint military maneuvers off the coast of Guyana on August nineteenth, So a few months later, the US deployed military vessels off Venezuela's coast, claiming it was going after Gardfeldli Los Sores. Then, just a couple days later, August twenty second, we get this weird Guyana announcement, the one I mentioned before. We're there talking about Garthfeldli Lo Sores Rubio shares it, and by September second, the
US is carrying out airstrikes in Venezuela. On December nineteenth, Guyana's oil production surpasses Venezuela's for the first time in history. On January third, twenty twenty six, the US military bombs Caracas and takes Madoro and his wife captive. It's one of the clearest examples of fossil fascism. The two are later charged with drug trafficking in New York work when Trump brings the country's top oil executives to the White
House to talk about divvying up Venezuela's oil. Though they're not what I would call excited.
President Trump is pushing those oil companies to invest one hundred billion dollars in Venezuela's oil infrastructure. At the White House on Friday, the President promised American oil executives that Venezuela was ready for investment.
We're taking back what was taken from us.
They took our.
Oil unders who we built that entire oil industries.
But not every company is fully on board, with some expressing concern about Venezuelan and regulations and security needs for personnel.
If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today, it's uninvestable.
That was excellent CEO Darren Woods speaking at the end there, and of course Woods is an interest in Venezuela. The whole point of this operation, as far as he's concerned, was to protect Exxon's play next door in Guana. From the early days of oil right up to the present, the industry has worked to connect itself to American identity, and now the two are almost interchangeable. The fossil fuel
industry and American imperialism go hand in hand too. Now their preferred president is in power, and those who question oil dominance or dependents are targeted as the enemy, whether foreign or domestic. Fossil fascism is a term used by environmental sociologists to describe the response of the fossil fuel industry and its political allies to the deepening of the climate crisis and increase pressure to transition away from fossil fuels.
That response, in a nutshell, is increasing alignment with authoritarian, nationalist or fascist political movements to protect their interests. Key markers of the phenomenon are denial and suppression of climate science to protect fossil fuel profits. Check scapegoating of migrants, ethnic minorities, or environmentalists. Check authoritarian responses to climate migration and resource conflicts, for example, war and border militarization. Check
and check corporate capture of government. Check the use of nationalism to justify continued fossil.
Fuel extraction, American energy dominance.
Check.
All the markers are there, and they've been there, growing increasingly more obvious. From the Redline Agreement, to the US invasion of Iraq, to the vilification of protesters, and now today the invasion of Venezuela and Iran. It's never been more glaring. The question is how much longer will we let it continue? Drilled is an original critical frequency production distributed by Pushkin Industries. This mini series was written and reported by me Amy westerveldt Our producers are Martin Saltz,
Austwick and Peter Duff. Matthew Fleming did the artwork. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time,