Speaker 1: Pushkin, lady, good gentlemen, starts pleasure to welcome you to Georgetown, Guyana.
Speaker 2: A few years ago, our old producer is there of
Speaker 2: entry and I took a reporting trip to Guyana. We
Speaker 2: did a whole season on the country, just as it
Speaker 2: was becoming a brand new oil superpower.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 4: Even there are parts of the east coast, and even
Speaker 4: here during spring tides, you should see the waves coming
Speaker 4: over the top of the wall. So any kind of
Speaker 4: rise in sea level, we're in trouble.
Speaker 2: That was salad Or, one of our guides in Guyana,
Speaker 2: giving us a tour of the sea wall surrounding Georgetown,
Speaker 2: the country's capital.
Speaker 4: How much do you keep building this wall up? At
Speaker 4: some point we're going to have to think about moving,
Speaker 4: and the government is already about it, actually moving the
Speaker 4: capital back into where the big airport is.
Speaker 2: Ninety percent of the country will need to be moved
Speaker 2: in the next decade or so due to sea level
Speaker 2: rise exacerbated by climate change. But the government of Guyana
Speaker 2: wasn't embracing oil because they thought climate change was a hoax. No,
Speaker 2: they said they were embracing it to pay for climate adaptation.
Speaker 2: I asked doctor Troy Thomas, a professor at the University
Speaker 2: of Guyana who's questioned the government's decision to allow massive
Speaker 2: amounts of drilling offshore, what he thought of this idea.
Speaker 5: I want him to show me one example where that
Speaker 5: has happened, and then show me another example where Guyana
Speaker 5: was forced to lead on something and develop something new.
Speaker 5: And should the rest of the world show me those
Speaker 5: two things side by side. In fact, show me one
Speaker 5: of them first and then I might be interested. Neither
Speaker 5: of those two things have happened, and so that to me,
Speaker 5: and it doesn't make sense. You've got to release more
Speaker 5: into the atmosphere in order to have the ability to
Speaker 5: clean it up. And if we look at the rate
Speaker 5: to which you know there is no cap on exploration,
Speaker 5: that's something that we are talking about low carbon development,
Speaker 5: but petroleum exploration and development is open ended. And I've
Speaker 5: been asking the question, maybe not loudly enough, but how
Speaker 5: much is enough?
Speaker 2: How much is enough? It's a great question. If you
Speaker 2: haven't listened to that season already, go check it out.
Speaker 2: We get into everything it does and doesn't mean for
Speaker 2: Guyana to be a big oil state, what it means
Speaker 2: for the people who live there, all of that for
Speaker 2: our purposes today, though, I'm going to go back to
Speaker 2: Salvador and something he told Sarah and I about the
Speaker 2: early days of Guiana's founding as a country. He and
Speaker 2: his colleague Jamal led us through a small museum in
Speaker 2: downtown Georgetown, stopping occasionally to give us some backstory.
Speaker 6: So, as you know, Guyana was actually spelt g u
Speaker 6: i n e. At one point of time under the
Speaker 6: British name, you got the true Guanas and what they
Speaker 6: used to call British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, and French Guiana.
Speaker 6: Dutch Guiana is surnam what else is here?
Speaker 3: And Spanish Gas here on our Knaco Spanish Caana became
Speaker 3: part of Venezuela, Portuguese Ganda became part of Brazil. So
Speaker 3: you've got French now, French, Dutch and English. But the
Speaker 3: border got changed.
Speaker 2: At this point, Salvador stood in front of a big
Speaker 2: map of the country to show how these former colonies
Speaker 2: had been divided into new countries.
Speaker 3: To Brazil. And we gave them all of this to Venezuela.
Speaker 3: Now do you claim that this should be border? So
Speaker 3: two thirds again they say belongs to them.
Speaker 7: Not no way, sorry, here.
Speaker 3: Not happening.
Speaker 2: In case you missed that, he's saying that Venezuela is
Speaker 2: laying claimed to a portion of Guyana. That border dispute
Speaker 2: has been going on for decades, but the twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: discovery of oil in Guyana really got it going again.
Speaker 2: By that point, Venezuela had kicked out the foreign oil companies.
Speaker 2: We interrupt this program to bring you a breaking news story.
Speaker 6: US oil giant Exon strikes oil in Guyana.
Speaker 2: Exon was the company that felt most screwed over by
Speaker 2: Venezuela's final nationalization of oil. The government had said, hey,
Speaker 2: you guys can stay only as minority partners, and Chevon
Speaker 2: said okay, but Exon said no way, and its assets
Speaker 2: in the country were seized. It already knew at the time,
Speaker 2: of course, that it was camping out on oil permits
Speaker 2: in Guyana that it had had since the nineties.
Speaker 7: The reason why we are famous know is that Venezuela
Speaker 7: has denied the US companies. They're rightful share, whatever that
Speaker 7: may be.
Speaker 2: This is Alfred Boulai, a longtime engineer and energy expert
Speaker 2: in Guyana. Today he works for Transparency Institute Guyana, which
Speaker 2: pushes for increased government transparency. He says, there had been
Speaker 2: exploratory oil drilling off and on in Guyana for decades
Speaker 2: before Exxon's big announcement.
Speaker 7: I knew it was oil being grilled, and certain knowledgeable
Speaker 7: people knew that, particularly mister Borlam in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 7: the former president. He knew these things.
Speaker 2: That's for President Forbes Burnham. The country officially gained independence
Speaker 2: from Britain in nineteen sixty six. In the lead up
Speaker 2: to independence, the most popular party was the People's Progressive
Speaker 2: Party the PPP. At that point, it was a cross
Speaker 2: racial party led by two men, one of Indian descent,
Speaker 2: Chetty Juggan, the other of African descent. Forbes Burnham, like
Speaker 2: a lot of other South American political leaders at the time,
Speaker 2: they were both leftists, and they had strong opinions about
Speaker 2: who should own and benefit from Guyana's natural resources. It's people. Also,
Speaker 2: like a lot of South American countries, Guyana was on
Speaker 2: the CIA's radar at the time, and they had strong
Speaker 2: opinions about which of these two men they'd prefer to
Speaker 2: see in charge of so many resources. That was Burnham,
Speaker 2: the one who didn't spend quite so much time throwing
Speaker 2: back Mohidos with Fidel Castro. As they have done in
Speaker 2: so many countries, the CIA leaned on racial differences to
Speaker 2: split the party in two and then backed Burnham. Despite
Speaker 2: its large stores of oil and relative stability compared to
Speaker 2: some of its neighbors, Guyana wasn't a big target for
Speaker 2: its oil for a while because it sat beneath the
Speaker 2: ocean floor some forty miles off the coast. So from
Speaker 2: the seventies to the early two thousands, the big US
Speaker 2: oil companies were concentrating on Venezuela.
Speaker 7: So I am absolutely sure that they knew there was
Speaker 7: oil there and just waited, Venezuela is going to play bad.
Speaker 7: Then they said, well, okay, we have oil elsewhere, and
Speaker 7: then negotiated a very sweet deal. And so the people
Speaker 7: who knew about oil knew these things, but the general
Speaker 7: public didn't. I have a personal theory that the oil
Speaker 7: is all connected, and that's one of the reasons the
Speaker 7: Venezuelans don't really want drilling taking place here, because let
Speaker 7: me drill there is already thinking.
Speaker 2: If you're hearing a lot of things that sound familiar,
Speaker 2: it sound like a little bit about what's happening today
Speaker 2: with the US with Exon and with Venezuela. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: know after the break, what everything the US and Exon
Speaker 2: we're getting up to in Guyana had to do with
Speaker 2: the invasion of Venezuela years later, and how it all
Speaker 2: connects back to the topic of this miniseries, fossil fueled fascism.
Speaker 2: I maybe Westervelt and this is drilled stay with us.
Speaker 2: I never really stopped reporting a story once I've started,
Speaker 2: so even though it's been a while since my last
Speaker 2: reporting trip to Guyana, I keep tabs on the news there,
Speaker 2: try to keep up with sources all of that, and
Speaker 2: I was surprised when suddenly one day last year, I
Speaker 2: saw a tweet from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Speaker 2: praising Guyana for taking action to crack down on narco trafficking.
Speaker 2: In the press release that he quote tweeted, the Guyanese
Speaker 2: government had specifically namechecked a gang. I knew the US
Speaker 2: government had just invented the Carfel de los Soles in
Speaker 2: much the same way that the Trump administration has lumped
Speaker 2: anyone with progressive politics under the umbrella Antifa and designated
Speaker 2: it as a terrorist organization. Garfel de los Soles is
Speaker 2: an idea, the idea of government corruption, of government officials
Speaker 2: looking the other way at drug traffickers, maybe even taking
Speaker 2: bribes from them, but it doesn't exist as an actual entity.
Speaker 2: I knew for my time in Guyana that they had
Speaker 2: beef with Venezuela, and that that beef was about oil,
Speaker 2: and that the oil economy in Guyana was tied more
Speaker 2: to one company and any other Exonmobile, and that that
Speaker 2: company also had beef with Venezuela. Time to dig into
Speaker 2: what had been going on with Guyana and Venezuela lately
Speaker 2: turned out a lot.
Speaker 8: Venezuela held a vote asking whether it should take over
Speaker 8: a portion of neighboring Guyana.
Speaker 2: This was the first story I found on NPR's State
Speaker 2: of the World, and it was from all the way
Speaker 2: back in late twenty twenty three. Venezuela voted on.
Speaker 8: What now Venezuela's referendum was over a jungle region called
Speaker 8: Essequibo that makes up the western two thirds of Guyana.
Speaker 2: Okay, I knew that Essequibo was where the oil is
Speaker 2: in Guyana, so this was starting to make a little
Speaker 2: more sense. Still, they had a vote on annexing two
Speaker 2: thirds of a neighboring country.
Speaker 8: On Sunday, Venezuela's autocratic president, Nicolas Maduro, held a news
Speaker 8: conference urging Venezuelans to throng to the polling station. They
Speaker 8: were asked to approve or reject five ballot questions. The
Speaker 8: most provocative proposal was to annex Sekibo. Guyana's Prime Minister
Speaker 8: Mark Phillips said in a radio interview that his country
Speaker 8: was preparing for the worst.
Speaker 9: You go to the war with what you have. We
Speaker 9: are prepared to defend Guyana with.
Speaker 1: What to we have.
Speaker 2: Venezuelans did vote to annex sekey Bow, or whatever a
Speaker 2: vote under Maduro was worth, it was enough to mobilize
Speaker 2: the international community. The International Court of Justice announced that
Speaker 2: it has jurisdiction over the border dispute and ask both
Speaker 2: countries to remain calm until it could issue a ruling.
Speaker 10: Ending a final decision in the case, the Bolivarian Republic
Speaker 10: of Venezuela shall refrain from taking any action which would
Speaker 10: modify this situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute,
Speaker 10: whereby the Cooperative Republic of Guyana administers and exercises control
Speaker 10: over that area.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, various governments pushed for peace talks between Guyana and Venezuela,
Speaker 2: which did eventually happen and resulted in a written agreement
Speaker 2: between the two called the Argyle Accords. Almost everyone seemed
Speaker 2: to immediately ignore this agreement. It was supposed to be
Speaker 2: a cooling off period. They agreed to not do anything
Speaker 2: more around this border dispute until the International Corps could
Speaker 2: make a decision, but almost immediately Guyana asked the UK
Speaker 2: for a show of military support, which it provided it's
Speaker 2: in a warship to the Guyana Venezuela border. A couple
Speaker 2: weeks later. Things calmed down for a couple of months,
Speaker 2: but in April twenty twenty four, Maduro signed the bill
Speaker 2: declaring Sekibo part of Venezuela into law. He took a
Speaker 2: little break after that for a little bit to make
Speaker 2: sure that he could secure reelection, but in January twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, Maro back at it, this time appointing a
Speaker 2: governor for the new Venezuelan state of Essekibo. For a minute,
Speaker 2: it looked like the Trump administration wasn't all that concerned
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 11: The new Trump team didn't seem to mind signaling a
Speaker 11: Rapprochemont with Maduro in exchange for Caracas agreeing to accept
Speaker 11: flights of Venezuelans deported from the US. Trump, though now
Speaker 11: says Maduro isn't taking back deportees fast enough.
Speaker 2: Then in February, Trump cut off an economic lifeline to
Speaker 2: Maduro's government, an exemption that Biden had passed to allow
Speaker 2: Chevron to export Venezuelan oil.
Speaker 4: President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that a permit which has
Speaker 4: allowed US energy giant Chevron to export Venezuelan oil will
Speaker 4: be canceled.
Speaker 11: Venezuela has been under strict US sanctioned since twenty twenty,
Speaker 11: instituted by the first Trump administration in an effort to
Speaker 11: topple authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro. The permit was issued in
Speaker 11: twenty twenty two by the Biden administration on the condition
Speaker 11: that Venezuela hold free and feral elections, But in twenty
Speaker 11: twenty four, after banning the strongest candidate to challenge him,
Speaker 11: Maduro claimed victory for a third term in office, despite
Speaker 11: significant evidence that he had in fact lost Venezuela's political
Speaker 11: opposition estimates that Chevron's exemption from those sanctions has provided
Speaker 11: the Maduro government with roughly four billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Remember in the first episode of this series where we
Speaker 2: talked about the Redline Agreement and how it bred this
Speaker 2: entitlement amongst the oil companies and the governments that supported them. Well,
Speaker 2: at the same time all that was happening in the
Speaker 2: Middle East, oil companies were doing the exact same thing
Speaker 2: in Latin America. Standard Oil of New Jersey, the company
Speaker 2: known today as Exonmobile, was the first foreign oil company
Speaker 2: to explore in Venezuela. It began drilling in nineteen thirteen.
Speaker 2: There Shell soon followed suit and hit him made finned
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty two. By nineteen thirty three, foreign companies
Speaker 2: Golf Royal, Dutch Shell, and Standard Oil controlled ninety eight
Speaker 2: percent of the Venezuelan oil market. And then Venezuela did
Speaker 2: the unthinkable. It took it back. In nineteen forty three,
Speaker 2: it passed the Hydrocarbons Law, which required foreign oil companies
Speaker 2: to give half their oil profits to the state. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, Googo Chavez decreed that all oil
Speaker 2: projects in Venezuela must be majority owned by the national
Speaker 2: oil company. That's when Exon left and Chevron stayed. This
Speaker 2: brings US up to speed all the way to March
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, when Marutro crossed a red line.
Speaker 12: Reports emerged of a Venezuelan Coastguard vessel in Guyana's Exclusive
Speaker 12: economic zone, specifically in the starboard bloc, a site crucial
Speaker 12: for offshore oil operations. Social media quickly spread images and
Speaker 12: videos of the vessel and Venezuelan soldiers communicating with the
Speaker 12: Prosperity floating, production, storage and offloading vessel before moving on
Speaker 12: to other units in the area.
Speaker 2: Venezuela Is sent a coast Guard ship to Excellent vessels
Speaker 2: offshore and told them they shouldn't be operating there. Here's
Speaker 2: part of their message to the ships.
Speaker 13: According to present your present a geographical position, you are
Speaker 13: operating in the eclosive economic loan of Venezuela, the public
Speaker 13: Bolivianianublic of Venezuela.
Speaker 2: According to your present geographical position, you are operating in
Speaker 2: the exclusive economic zone of the Bolvarian Republic of Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Diana's president, doctor Irfan Ali, was outraged.
Speaker 9: The patrol vessel transmitted a radio message declaring that the
Speaker 9: FBSO was operating in what it termed disputed international waters.
Speaker 12: Soon after the guy Inese government confirmed the incursion, and
Speaker 12: President Doctor Eir Finale swiftly activated diplomatic channels and condemned
Speaker 12: the actions as a violation of both international law and
Speaker 12: agreements made between the two nations.
Speaker 9: We have reached out to all our international partners, and
Speaker 9: all our international partners have responded positively.
Speaker 2: None more so than the US, which issued a statement
Speaker 2: that Manduro would suffer consequences for his actions. They also
Speaker 2: sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deliver this message
Speaker 2: in person a couple of weeks later. It would be
Speaker 2: a very bad day for Venezuelan regime.
Speaker 8: If they were to attack Diana or attack exon Mobile
Speaker 8: or anything like.
Speaker 3: It would be a very bad day or a very
Speaker 3: bad week for them, and it will not in.
Speaker 8: Well for them.
Speaker 2: The very next day after that speech that Rubio gave,
Speaker 2: the US and Guyana conducted joint military maneuvers off the
Speaker 2: coast of Guyana on August nineteenth, So a few months later,
Speaker 2: the US deployed military vessels off Venezuela's coast, claiming it
Speaker 2: was going after Gardfeldli Los Sores. Then, just a couple
Speaker 2: days later, August twenty second, we get this weird Guyana announcement,
Speaker 2: the one I mentioned before. We're there talking about Garthfeldli
Speaker 2: Lo Sores Rubio shares it, and by September second, the
Speaker 2: US is carrying out airstrikes in Venezuela. On December nineteenth,
Speaker 2: Guyana's oil production surpasses Venezuela's for the first time in history.
Speaker 2: On January third, twenty twenty six, the US military bombs
Speaker 2: Caracas and takes Madoro and his wife captive. It's one
Speaker 2: of the clearest examples of fossil fascism. The two are
Speaker 2: later charged with drug trafficking in New York work when
Speaker 2: Trump brings the country's top oil executives to the White
Speaker 2: House to talk about divvying up Venezuela's oil. Though they're
Speaker 2: not what I would call excited.
Speaker 14: President Trump is pushing those oil companies to invest one
Speaker 14: hundred billion dollars in Venezuela's oil infrastructure. At the White
Speaker 14: House on Friday, the President promised American oil executives that
Speaker 14: Venezuela was ready for investment.
Speaker 10: We're taking back what was taken from us.
Speaker 8: They took our.
Speaker 10: Oil unders who we built that entire oil industries.
Speaker 14: But not every company is fully on board, with some
Speaker 14: expressing concern about Venezuelan and regulations and security needs for personnel.
Speaker 4: If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and
Speaker 4: frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today, it's uninvestable.
Speaker 2: That was excellent CEO Darren Woods speaking at the end there,
Speaker 2: and of course Woods is an interest in Venezuela. The
Speaker 2: whole point of this operation, as far as he's concerned,
Speaker 2: was to protect Exxon's play next door in Guana. From
Speaker 2: the early days of oil right up to the present,
Speaker 2: the industry has worked to connect itself to American identity,
Speaker 2: and now the two are almost interchangeable. The fossil fuel
Speaker 2: industry and American imperialism go hand in hand too. Now
Speaker 2: their preferred president is in power, and those who question
Speaker 2: oil dominance or dependents are targeted as the enemy, whether
Speaker 2: foreign or domestic. Fossil fascism is a term used by
Speaker 2: environmental sociologists to describe the response of the fossil fuel
Speaker 2: industry and its political allies to the deepening of the
Speaker 2: climate crisis and increase pressure to transition away from fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: That response, in a nutshell, is increasing alignment with authoritarian,
Speaker 2: nationalist or fascist political movements to protect their interests. Key
Speaker 2: markers of the phenomenon are denial and suppression of climate
Speaker 2: science to protect fossil fuel profits. Check scapegoating of migrants,
Speaker 2: ethnic minorities, or environmentalists. Check authoritarian responses to climate migration
Speaker 2: and resource conflicts, for example, war and border militarization. Check
Speaker 2: and check corporate capture of government. Check the use of
Speaker 2: nationalism to justify continued fossil.
Speaker 8: Fuel extraction, American energy dominance.
Speaker 5: Check.
Speaker 2: All the markers are there, and they've been there, growing
Speaker 2: increasingly more obvious. From the Redline Agreement, to the US
Speaker 2: invasion of Iraq, to the vilification of protesters, and now
Speaker 2: today the invasion of Venezuela and Iran. It's never been
Speaker 2: more glaring. The question is how much longer will we
Speaker 2: let it continue? Drilled is an original critical frequency production
Speaker 2: distributed by Pushkin Industries. This mini series was written and
Speaker 2: reported by me Amy westerveldt Our producers are Martin Saltz,
Speaker 2: Austwick and Peter Duff. Matthew Fleming did the artwork. Our
Speaker 2: First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time,