I'm John Bacher with Allison Fadirka of the geopolitical futures and analyst.

She's writing very cogently about Venezuela in this timeline we're living in

between now and April 18th when decisions will be made in Washington, we're told.

However, in the meantime, Brazil is evidencing concern and we're told by Reuters

within these hours that Lula de Silva is looking to discuss with Maduro both the election and a place called

Esakeboeau. Allison what is Esakeboeau what is the what is the confrontation here? So the area you're discussing is an offshore territory that is

straddling the border between Guyana and Venezuela. The two countries also have a land dispute and this offshore extension is the same

concept of who owns what. Normally this would be something that they would just rhetorically fight about, but the problem and what makes it so contentious is that there is valuable oil deposits offshore in this area.

And some of those oil deposits fall squarely into the uncontested area that belongs to Gaiyan and some of them fall into the disputed area with Venezuela.

There is a strong effort by Guyana to develop their oil resources and thus far they've been

pretty mindful about concentrating or doing anything too

provocative in this area. However it is of growing interest as Guyana develops

its oil production and it's also an excellent

way for Venezuela to have an issue that really rallies everybody around the flag in

terms of hey this is actually supposed to be our natural resources

we're entitled to them and we need to you know try to stake our claim and and get rights over

that again very valuable valuable source of oil.

Maduro or his representatives have teased the idea

that there could be military action.

However, your anticipation is that the US would reach out and ask help from Gustavo

Petro of Bogota and Lula de Silva of Brazil. Is that what we're seeing now,

Lula as a mediator?

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