Letter to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, about Guyana’s illegal activities in the Essequibo

Letter addressed to the Secretary General of the United Nations Organization (UN), Antonio Guterres, about illegal activities of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana in the maritime projection of the Essequibo territory. Caracas December 22, 2018 Your Excellency Antonio Guterres General secretary United Nations Organization New York, United States of America Your excellence, Please respectfully allow me to contact you to make you aware of an important factual situation constituted by activities that violate international legality committed by the Cooperative Republic of Guyana in the maritime territory of Venezuela and which must be attended with due urgency. In this sense, the Government of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana has published on December 7, 2018 a notice to mariners of six ships by ExxonMobil through its subsidiary Guyana Esso Exploration & Production Guayana Ltd (EEPGL), to carry out exploration activities and seismic studies for six months, indicating the unprecedented incursion in a recognized Venezuelan maritime space, to which the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has expressed its strongest protest. Your Excellency, the sister Cooperative Republic of Guyana has employed the design of a unilaterally named Starbroke block that occupies the enormous extension of almost 27 thousand square km of unbounded maritime waters, over which it obviously does not exercise sovereignty. It is serious that in its official communications it is attributed as its «Maritime Zone», with the purpose of appropriating such a vast territory. Venezuela has constantly denounced the injury of elementary principles of Public International Law that the conception of said hydrocarbon exploration block entails, but this time the situation has reached an unprecedented extreme, by pretending with this new exploration to venture into maritime waters of undeniable Venezuelan sovereignty observable to the naked eye. The situation, beyond the illicit claims of the sister Cooperative Republic of Guyana to take over immense unbounded areas, this time represents a completely unwise and inconvenient provocation, and an attack on the territorial integrity of Venezuela that cannot be accepted. Please note that said exploration activity unilaterally permitted by Guyana occurs in the westernmost sector of the aforementioned Starbroke block, in waters that are no longer the natural projection of Guyana Esequiba -area in demand- but of the Delta Amacuro, of unquestionable Venezuelan sovereignty, which aggravates the situation and makes this provocation more palpable. Currently, just at the moment of making you aware of this situation, the Venezuelan Navy maritime patrol units have reported an incident, which occurred with the DELTA MONAC vessels of Triniddad and Tobago and, RANFOR of the Bahamas, both located in Venezuelan jurisdictional waters, who say they have received permission from the government of Guyana. In compliance with the protocols, they were told that they were in jurisdictional waters, so they decided to sail to the waters of the area in demand to carry out their hydrocarbon seismic exploration activities. Therefore, Your Excellency, I present to you this appeal, which is none other than that of Diplomacy of Peace, so that you may consider exercising international stability and persuading the Cooperative Republic of Guyana to dispense with these de facto ways, illicit in addition. Your Excellency, while thanking you for your self-sacrificing time, allow me also to thank you for your best disposition and wish you in the coming holidays our most sincere yearnings for world peace and equality, the real empire of human rights and the highest values ​​of humanity. Jorge Arreaza