Read Part 1: Venezuela-Guyana Essequibo Dispute: A Brief History
When Oil Changed the Stakes: Liza-1, Stabroek and the Essequibo
Oil did not create the Essequibo dispute.
The disagreement over the territory had already survived empires, independence, arbitration, treaties and generations of Venezuelan and Guyanese governments.
But oil changed its economic significance.
In 2015, an ExxonMobil-led consortium struck oil at Liza-1 offshore Guyana. The discovery helped move a long-running territorial controversy from the margins of international attention toward the center of one of South America’s most consequential petroleum developments.
At the heart of that development sits the Stabroek Block.
According to the source document, ExxonMobil operates the block with a 45% working interest, while Chevron-owned Hess holds 30% and CNOOC the remaining 25%. The document states that production from the offshore acreage has reached roughly 1 Bbo since first oil in 2019.
For Guyana, oil changed the country’s economic trajectory.
For Venezuela, it changed the surroundings of a claim that had existed for generations.
A Territorial Dispute Meets an Offshore Petroleum Province
The distinction is important.
Venezuela’s claim did not begin with Liza-1.
Caracas had long challenged Georgetown’s authority to license acreage offshore the disputed territory, arguing that maritime boundaries could not be fully resolved without addressing the underlying sovereignty question.
But large-scale petroleum development raised the stakes.
The controversy was no longer primarily about remote territory, historic agreements and maps. Offshore investment brought producing assets, international companies and significant infrastructure into the picture.
The source document describes Venezuela asserting adjacent maritime claims through decrees in 2015 and 2021, while Guyana continued to develop offshore resources.
For energy companies, that distinction matters.
Geology does not exist separately from sovereignty, licensing and government authority. An offshore discovery may begin with seismic interpretation and a drilling program, but development ultimately depends on a legal and political framework capable of supporting decades of investment.
Essequibo places those worlds next to each other.
Guyana’s New Heartbeat
The petroleum transformation has also changed the dispute inside Guyana itself.
The original manuscript describes a country marked since independence by political rivalry and ethnic tensions. Against that backdrop, Essequibo occupies a particularly important position in Guyanese national identity.
Where Venezuela often frames the territory through the language of historical loss, Guyana sees it as an inseparable part of the nation.
Oil adds another dimension.
The document describes Stabroek’s development as generating unprecedented petroleum wealth for Guyana, while the country’s leaders have sought to demonstrate that the benefits can extend across Guyanese society.
Yet the source argues that one issue consistently transcends many of the country’s political divisions: the conviction that Essequibo belongs to Guyana.
That makes the dispute unusually difficult to separate from domestic politics on either side of the border.
Two Countries, Two Petroleum Stories
There is a larger irony.
By late 2026, the source document describes Guyana’s Stabroek Block as having reached 1 Bbo, while Venezuelan oil production had rebounded to approximately 1 MMbo/d.
The two neighboring countries therefore represent very different petroleum trajectories.
Guyana is building an offshore industry around discoveries made within the past decade.
Venezuela possesses more than a century of petroleum history and is attempting to reestablish foreign investment following years of extraordinary political and economic disruption. The source describes deteriorating infrastructure and a significant loss of workers through migration during Venezuela’s economic decline.
For operators and service companies looking at the region, the contrast is difficult to ignore.
One country offers the challenges associated with rapidly developing a relatively new petroleum province. The other is confronting the complexities of restoring investment in a mature hydrocarbon industry.
Between them sits a territorial dispute neither country regards as marginal.
The Courtroom and the Oilfield
The International Court of Justice is considering Guyana’s request to affirm that the 1899 arbitral award remains valid and binding. Venezuela, meanwhile, continues to base its position on its rejection of that award and the framework created by the 1966 Geneva Agreement.
That process matters.
But the legal dispute exists alongside another reality: energy development continues to shape the region.
Whatever the eventual legal outcome, a judgment alone is unlikely to erase more than a century of national narratives on either side. The dispute is now embedded not merely in diplomatic correspondence and treaties, but in how Venezuelans and Guyanese understand their respective countries.
And today, it exists alongside major petroleum investment.
Oil didn’t create the Essequibo dispute. It made the consequences of leaving it unresolved considerably more important to the energy industry.
That leads to the final question in this series.
What happens to an old territorial grievance when the political and petroleum landscape around it changes again?
NEXT: Part 3, “The ICJ Will Rule. Governments Will Change. Why Essequibo Still Matters.”
