Has Venezuela made military threats over Essequibo oil in 2024?

1. What claim supporters say: overt threats and coercive posture

Reporting and think‑tank analysis presented in 2024 and through early 2025 describe a Venezuelan campaign that combined legal moves, political rhetoric, and military maneuvers aimed at pressuring Guyana over Essequibo. Sources document the creation of a new Venezuelan federal entity for the disputed territory, a referendum law, and public statements framing foreign military contacts with Guyana as preparation for aggression—moves characterized as coercive ^{[5] [6]}. Satellite imagery and on‑the‑ground reporting show construction and expansion at Anacoco Island bases, armored deployments, and fast patrol boats with missile capability positioned near the frontier; analysts interpret these as tangible steps that could be used to threaten or interdict oil operations in Guyana waters ^{[1] [3] [2]}. The cumulative effect of political steps and force posture is presented by these sources as a deliberate Venezuelan strategy to shift bargaining leverage away from multilateral legal avenues toward bilateral pressure.

2. What claim detractors and cautious analysts say: signaling, not an explicit war plan

Countervailing reporting stresses a gap between rhetoric/force posture and an articulated plan to invade or seize offshore platforms. Multiple outlets note that while Maduro’s government escalated rhetoric and consolidated legal claims, there is limited direct evidence of explicit, public military threats specifically promising attacks on Guyana’s oil infrastructure during 2024; instead, many actions read as signaling and deterrence designed to rally domestic support and complicate Guyana’s partnerships with foreign militaries ^{[7] [5] [8]}. Analysts highlight Venezuela’s logistical and operational constraints, the unsuitability of some assets for sustained blue‑water operations, and the political costs of open conflict with regional and extra‑regional powers, arguing the most probable forms of coercion were harassment, patrols into contested waters, and ambiguous warnings rather than declared operations to seize oilfields ^{[8] [2]}.

3. The evidence on deployments and military capability

Independent imagery and reporting detail expansion of bases, new bridge and airfield capacity at Anacoco, armored vehicles, and Iranian‑made fast patrol boats deployed to riverine and coastal fronts, with some missile‑capable craft positioned where they could reach Guyana’s maritime zone within an hour according to specialists ^{[1] [3] [2]}. These facts provide a clear signal that Caracas increased its capacity to project force into contested spaces, elevating the risk to commercial operations and regional stability. However, sources also emphasize limits: many of these assets are optimized for coastal interdiction rather than prolonged blue‑water engagements required to sustain a campaign against offshore platforms, and the regime’s broader economic and military constraints reduce the plausibility of an extended conventional invasion ^{[3] [8]}.

4. Diplomatic moves and international reactions that shaped the threat environment

Venezuela paired its military moves with domestic legal steps—parliamentary creation of a state claiming Essequibo and a referendum—and with pointed diplomatic messaging accusing Guyana of aligning with US Southern Command. Guyana sought international support and increased military preparedness, including partnerships with outside powers, which in turn amplified Venezuelan warnings ^{[5] [4]}. International responses—public warnings from U.S. officials and show‑of‑force actions such as overflights—both bolstered Guyana’s deterrence and fed Caracas’s narrative of foreign threat, complicating de‑escalation. These interactions show a dynamic where military posturing and diplomatic signaling reinforced each other, producing a higher risk of incidents even absent a formal declaration of hostile intent.

5. Bottom line: credible coercion, not incontrovertible proof of explicit 2024 threats to oil infrastructure

The factual record across these analyses supports that Venezuela executed a credible coercive strategy in 2024—combining legal claims, mobilized forces, and aggressive rhetoric—that materially raised the risk to Guyana’s oil interests. The record does not, however, show uniformly documented instances of Venezuelan officials issuing clear, unambiguous public threats to attack oil installations in 2024; much of the evidence is of capability and signaling rather than documented operational orders or declared attack plans ^{[1] [7] [4]}. The most likely and well‑evidenced hazards were maritime harassment, patrols into disputed zones, and escalatory rhetoric that could imperil commercial operations through interdiction or accidents, rather than a confirmed intent to launch full‑scale military seizures in that year ^{[8] [2]}.