Science

Armed Venezuelan Ship “Threatens” Exxon Mobile Vessel Off Guyana Coast

A Venezuelan military ship entered a major offshore oil and gas field off the coast of Guyana early Saturday, approaching an ExxonMobil contracted vessel, according to Bloomberg. This incident comes days after President Trump canceled a key oil deal with Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela, citing its failure to repatriate an adequate number of illegal aliens from the US.

X user News Source Guyana posted a video showing the armed Venezuelan patrol boat probing the waters around the Exxon contracted ship in the Stabroek Block (Oil & Gas Field). 

News Source: Authorities in Guyana at the Government level and at the level of Exxon Mobil are probing the presence of a Venezuelan Military vessel in Guyana’s waters sailing close to drill ships and other vessels in the Stabroek Block where oil production is taking place. pic.twitter.com/9YsmfWft8X
— News Source Guyana (@newssourcegy) March 1, 2025
The US State Department wrote on X the incident was unacceptable:

“Venezuelan naval vessels threatening ExxonMobil’s floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is unacceptable and a clear violation of Guyana’s internationally-recognized maritime territory. Further provocation will result in consequences for the Maduro regime. The United States reaffirms its support for Guyana’s territorial integrity and the 1899 arbitral award.”

Venezuelan naval vessels threatening ExxonMobil’s floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is unacceptable and a clear violation of Guyana’s internationally-recognized maritime territory. Further provocation will result in consequences for the Maduro regime. The…
— Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (@WHAAsstSecty) March 1, 2025
Another video of the incident.

Video donde observamos al ABV “Guaiquerí” de la Armada Bolivariana de Venezuela frente a un Buque de perforación petrolera. Posiblemente sea en el Campo “Payara” del bloque “Stabroek” en aguas por delimitar entre Guyana y Venezuela #1Mar #Mimapa https://t.co/8ymmJO0WX9 pic.twitter.com/MdkrOCNNGe
— Mi Mapa de Venezuela incluye nuestro Esequibo (@AntroCanal) March 1, 2025
Exxon discovered Stabroek in 2015. It produces 650,000 barrels daily and is situated in heavily disputed waters with Venezuela.  

Guyana’s President, Irfaan Ali, stated that the Venezuelan military vessel radioed the Exxon-contracted ship, declaring that the area lies within disputed international waters.

“During this incursion, the Venezuelan vessel approached various assets in our exclusive waters, including FPSO Prosperity,” Ali said, referring to one of the Exxon-contracted vessels.

The Organization of American States stated, “Such acts of intimidation constitute a clear violation of international law, undermine regional stability, and threaten the principles of peaceful coexistence between nations,” adding it “unequivocally condemns the recent actions of Venezuelan naval vessels.”

The incident follows Trump’s decision to reverse the concessions of an oil transaction agreement dated Nov. 26, 2022, with Venezuela, citing Maduro’s failure to repatriate enough migrants.

We are hereby reversing the concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela, on the oil transaction agreement, dated November 26, 2022, and also having to do with Electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime.…
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) February 26, 2025
Not a smart move, Maduro. 

Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/02/2025 – 07:35…

Trump, Vance, & The New New World Order

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

This past week, the venerable Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for The Financial Times, used his column to declare the Trump administration and, by extension, the United States “the enemy of the West.” “Today,” Wolf wrote, “autocracies [are] increasingly confident,” and “the United States is moving to their side.” According to the subhead on the column, “Washington has decided to abandon…its postwar role in the world.” Meanwhile, Wolf cites the (in his estimation) august Franklin Roosevelt, as he complains that the United States “has decided instead to become just another great power, indifferent to anything but its short-term interests.”

The ironies here—as well as the historical ignorance—abound.

To start, one would imagine that Wolf, an educated man with two degrees from Oxford, might know that it was his countryman (and two-time Prime Minister), Henry John Temple (i.e. Lord Palmerston), who declared in a speech in the House of Commons that “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Wolf might also be expected to know that this statement was repeated—more famously and more pithily—by Henry Kissinger, perhaps the quintessential American diplomat in the supposedly vaunted postwar order. Kissinger, like Palmerston and Trump (apparently) understood that a nation that pursues anything other than its interests is foolish, faithless, and, in time, doomed.

What bothers Wolf, it would seem, is that American interests are diverging from British and continental European interests. That is unfortunate, but it is also more than likely the case that this divergence is the result of Britain and Europe’s abandonment of the principles, values, and ambitions the allies once shared, rather than the other way around. For example, Wolf criticizes the speech given by J.D. Vance in which the vice president defended the traditional American dedication to free speech and attacked the British and European rejection of that principle. Yet again, Wolf might be expected to know that the American preoccupation with this and all other negative rights is something the nation’s Founders inherited from their British forefathers. If the two nations now differ on the importance of this fundamental right, then that’s hardly Vance’s, Trump’s, or any other American’s fault.

More ironies are found in Wolf’s praise of the now-dying postwar order and his citation of FDR as the architect of that order. While Wolf is correct that Roosevelt was one of two Americans most responsible for the creation of the postwar order, he is wrong in believing that the order was virtuous by design and that it played out precisely as Roosevelt intended. Indeed, he couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.

Almost from the moment the United States entered World War II, Roosevelt was planning how best to achieve the goal he inherited from his former boss and Progressive predecessor, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson’s goal, of course, was “global governance” under the League of Nations, a goal that the U.S. Senate,…