This is a new world report. I'm John Batch with my colleagues, Ernesto Arujo and Joseph

Omar. Joseph, I read the Rodis report, then as well as National Assembly, has green

lighted a referendum regarding a territory of the spirit with Guyana, this according

to the foreign minister. Then as well as this week, Rodis is reporting. Rejected Guyana's

recent oil tender, arguing that the offshore blocks awarded are in disputed areas, and

the companies awarded the blocks will not have rights to explore them. This all matter,

there are a lot of technicalities here, but this is a dispute over an enormous discovery

of oil, billions of barrels, and also dates, I believe, to the time when both Venezuela

and Guyana were colonial powers in the region, and Britain was present along with other

European powers. What is the sense of a referendum in Venezuela? Where is this going, Joseph?

So John, this issue is perhaps the most important issue that's happening right now in Latin

America, and probably one of the most important in the world, because the territorial dispute

between Guyana and Venezuela can end up becoming equivalent to what is Ukraine in his conflict

with Russia. This could get military or militarized, this could get conflict very quickly.

Just a little bit of background on the territorial dispute. This is a century-long territorial

dispute. Guyana used to be a British colony, it went its independence in 1966, and they've

had a territorial dispute over the border with Venezuela ever since. They had tried many

times to resolve this dispute through international arbitration, but most of the time that international

arbitration favors on the site of Guyana and the sovereignty of the country, which is not

to the liking of Venezuela. The Chavez government, when the beginning of the beginning of the

century, did nothing about this issue for a long time, and neither did Nicholas Maduro

when Chavez died in 2013, until Guyana found and discovered upwards of 11 billions of barrels

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