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In the Caribbean, the Trump Admin Is Implementing a Dangerous Geopolitics of Oil
The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.
Apr 11, 2025
The Trump administration is organizing a network of energy-producing states in the Caribbean to provide the region with a steady supply of fossil fuels, despite the environmental risks.
Hoping to sideline Venezuela, the oil-rich country that once provided the Caribbean with affordable supplies of oil, the Trump administration is working to position other oil-rich countries as the region’s primary suppliers of energy. Administration officials are particularly focused on Guyana and Suriname, two oil-rich countries that they hope the region’s leaders will embrace as alternatives to Venezuela.
“The fact that now their own countries—Guyana, Suriname—are able to have and really surpass Venezuela in its oil production and be able to work with its neighbors there in the region is a huge opportunity for the Caribbean,” U.S. Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone said at a March 25 press briefing.
The Geopolitics of Oil in the Caribbean
Over the past two decades, the United States has engaged in a major rivalry with Venezuela for influence in the Caribbean. The U.S.-Venezuela rivalry has centered on oil, a fossil fuel that many Caribbean nations import to meet their energy needs.
Early in the 21st century, Venezuela took advantage of its vast oil reserves to become a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean. Under a program called Petrocaribe, Venezuela shared its oil wealth by providing Caribbean countries with shipments at low rates.
Many Caribbean countries embraced Petrocaribe. Not only did the Venezuelan program enable them to meet their energy needs, but it empowered them to begin developing their economies more independently of the United States, which has long been the dominant power in the region.
Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil.
For many years, the United States failed to offer alternatives to Petrocaribe. While Venezuela emerged as a powerful counterweight to U.S. power in the Caribbean, officials in Washington faced the possibility that formerly dependent countries would break free from the U.S. orbit.
With its influence waning, the United States eventually developed its own energy program. In 2014, the Obama administration introduced the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, which offered Caribbean countries technical assistance, financing for energy projects, and political support for regional energy planning.
U.S. officials presented the initiative as a way of bringing clean energy to the Caribbean. The program, they said, would empower Caribbean countries to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce their dependence on oil imports.
“You, the countries of the Caribbean, have a chance at the supply of energy that’s more resilient, more sustainable, cleaner, more affordable than you have ever, ever had,” Joe Biden told Caribbean leaders in 2015, when he was vice president in the Obama administration.
Rather than fully embracing environmentally friendly alternatives to Petrocaribe, however, U.S. officials quietly engaged in a geopolitical game over oil. Believing that the United States could outmatch Venezuela on fossil fuels, they set out to find ways of achieving regional dominance in oil and natural gas.
One tactic was to promote U.S. fossil fuel exports to the Caribbean. “We have more oil and gas rigs running in the United States than all the rest of the world combined,” Biden boasted in 2015, when he was promoting the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative.
Another tactic focused on finding new sources of fossil fuels in the Caribbean. Several U.S. officials developed high hopes for Guyana, a South American country with large offshore oil deposits. In 2015, ExxonMobil announced significant discoveries, raising expectations that the country would become one of the region’s largest suppliers of oil.
As U.S. officials pushed alternative sources of fossil fuels, they also sought to end Venezuelan influence altogether. Acting consistently with the long history of U.S. coups and interventions in Latin America, the United States sought to bring down the Venezuelan government.
The first Trump administration made some of the most audacious moves, openly embracing regime change. From 2017 to 2019, it imposed severe sanctions on the country’s finances and oil industry to facilitate the collapse of the Venezuelan government.
Although the Venezuelan government survived the challenges, which continued into the Biden administration, the country experienced an unprecedented economic collapse. With its oil industry in decline and under restrictions by U.S. sanctions, Venezuela could no longer maintain Petrocaribe, diminishing its efforts to be a major supplier of oil for the Caribbean.
Trump Administration’s New Approach
Since the second Trump administration entered office in January, it has faced a new power dynamic in the Caribbean. With Venezuela having undergone one of the worst economic collapses for a country not at war, including a major decline in its oil industry, the administration finds itself in a position to restore U.S. supremacy in the Caribbean.
Moving to take advantage of the situation, the Trump administration has added a new dimension to the geopolitics of oil. Hoping to permanently sideline Venezuela and exclude it from the Caribbean altogether, it has begun to create a network of oil-producing countries that will provide the region with oil under U.S. direction.
“This is an opportunity,” Claver-Carone said at the March 25 press briefing. Caribbean countries “are going to be able to support each other, to be able to create an energy security framework, which has already changed the geopolitics of the region.”
Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has made several moves in pursuit of its goals. On March 24, President Trump issued an executive order that threatened to impose a tariff of 25% on any country that imports oil from Venezuela. Trump’s order put strong pressure on Caribbean leaders who have been hoping to revive Petrocaribe.
Second, the Trump administration has organized U.S. diplomatic visits to Caribbean nations. At the end of March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Guyana and Suriname, where he praised their leaders for embracing oil production and encouraged them to work together in a new network under U.S. leadership.
Surinamese President Chandrikapersad Santokhi said that he anticipated that Guyana and Suriname “will become important partners for the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere.”
Still, Venezuela remains in a position to challenge the United States. It is continuing to produce more oil than Guyana and Suriname combined, enabling it to maintain some exports to countries in the Caribbean. It is also claiming sovereignty over Essequibo, the western part of Guyana that includes the country’s offshore oil deposits.
The Trump administration has responded aggressively to Venezuela’s territorial claims, signaling that the U.S. military will intervene if Venezuela attempts to seize any of Guyana’s territory. Administration officials are trying to create a security agreement with Guyana that will provide the country with the same kinds of military protections that the United States extends to its energy-rich partners in the Middle East.
Claver-Carone envisioned “a greater security cooperation agreement with Guyana—almost akin to what we’re working on with some of the Gulf states.”
The Trump administration’s strategy marks a major turning point for the Caribbean. Whereas the United States had once presented the region with options for shifting away from fossil fuels, it has now abandoned that approach. The new U.S. goal is to lock the region into permanent reliance on fossil fuels, only now under a network of energy-rich countries overseen by the United States.
What the Trump administration is doing, in other words, is implementing a far more dangerous geopolitics of oil. As it moves to isolate Venezuela, it is pushing energy-dependent nations to embrace fossil fuels, regardless of the environmental consequences for the region and the world.
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'Apocalyptic Scenes': Hurricane Beryl Leaves 'Complete Devastation' in Its Wake
"What we see here are the consequences of a rampaging climate change," the prime minister of one impacted country said, as the storm now bears down on Jamaica.
Jul 03, 2024
Hurricane Beryl—the earliest Category 4 and Category 5 storm to ever form in the Atlantic Basin—killed at least seven people as it tore through the southeastern Caribbean nations of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada on Monday, leaving behind devastation that the leaders of both countries compared to "Armageddon."
Scientists say that the record-breaking storm intensified so rapidly and so early in the season due to above-average ocean temperatures heated primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"What we see here are the consequences of a rampaging climate change," Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves toldDemocracy Now! on Wednesday morning. "We are in the era of the Anthropocene, and the developed countries—the major emitters—are not taking this matter seriously."
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters."
Beryl made landfall on Carriacou Island in Grenada at around 11:00 am EDT on Monday as a Category 4 storm before strengthening to a Category 5 later in the day. With winds blowing as high as 150 miles per hour, it was the strongest hurricane to hit the Grenadines since at least 1851.
The storm flattened Carriacou in half an hour, Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said in a press briefing late Monday.
"Having seen it myself, there is really nothing that could prepare you to see this level of destruction," Mitchell told reporters. "It is almost Armageddon-like. Almost total damage or destruction of all buildings, whether they be public buildings, homes, or private facilities. Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture, complete and total destruction of the natural environment. There is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou."
The hurricane also pummeled the Grenadian island of Martinique. On the two islands, which are home to around 6,000 people, the storm damaged or destroyed 98% of structures, including Carriacou's marinas, airport, and main hospital, The New York Times reported. It also wiped out electricity and communications on the two islands, damaged crops, downed trees and power lines, and flattened Carriacou's mangroves.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the hardest-hit islands were Canouan, Mayreau, and Union Island, where 90% of homes were flattened or seriously damaged, according toThe Guardian. The outlet said social media footage of the damage showed "apocalyptic scenes."
Speaking on Democracy Now!, Gonsalves compared conditions in the south of the country to "Armageddon."
"Union Island is flattened," he said, adding that everyone on Union and Mayreau were homeless.
One woman who survived the storm described the experience to Vincentian journalist Demion McTair, saying, "Just imagine stoves flying in the air, house flying, lifting up, tearing apart, and just going in the wind. Just like that… Just imagine."
Despite the devastation, the death toll has remained low for now, with three reported dead in Grenada, one in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and three in Venezuela, according to The New York Times.
However, the task of rebuilding from the storm will be "Herculean," Gonsalves told Democracy Now!, adding that he estimated the damage was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We are in a sense going up a down escalator," he said. "Every time we make some progress, we get hit by these natural disasters and we have to start afresh."
Yet, given the role that the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis plays in supercharging storms and hurricanes, these disasters expose the deep guilt of powerful corporations who have profited from the continued consumption of coal, oil, and gas.
"Seriously, at what point do we get crimes against humanity trials for the fossil fuel execs and economists, like Nobel winner William Nordhaus, who minimized climate impacts for decades?" climate advocate Julia Steinberger wrote on social media in response to the storm's devastation.
Greenpeace International agreed.
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters," the group wrote on social media.
Both Gonsalves and Mitchell criticized wealthier nations for leaving Caribbean countries to bear the brunt of a crisis they did little to cause.
In Monday's press briefing, Mitchell said he expected recovery to cost tens of billions of dollars and called for climate justice:
We are no longer prepared to accept that it's OK for us to constantly suffer significant, clearly demonstrated loss and damage arising from climatic events and be expected to rebuild year after year while the countries that are responsible for creating this situation—and exacerbating this situation—sit idly by with platitudes and tokenism.
Grenada's economy, Grenada's environment, both physically built and natural, has taken an enormous hit from this hurricane.
It has put the people of Carriacou and Petit Martinique light years behind, and they are required to pull themselves by the boot strap, on their own.
This is not right, it is not fair, and it not just.
Mitchell promised to establish a task force to address the issue involving other small island developing states and the international community.
Gonsalves, speaking from his residence late on Monday, said that developed countries who have contributed the most to the crisis were "getting a lot of talking, but you are not seeing a lot of action—as in making money available to small-island developing states and other vulnerable countries."
He also referred to the United Nations climate negotiations, or COPs, as "largely a talkshop."
He expressed hope that seeing such a strong hurricane form so early in the season "will alert them to our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses and encourage them to honor the commitments they have made on a range of issues, from the Paris accord to the current time."
However, he also expressed concern that the climate crisis was not a larger point of discussion in the upcoming U.K. elections, or in other elections worldwide this year.
"The same thing is happening in other parts of the election in Western Europe and the United States as countries move to the right," Gonsalves said. "It's a terrible time for small-island developing states and vulnerable countries."
Meanwhile, Beryl's potential path of destruction is not over, as it approaches Jamaica as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of up to 140 miles per hour, the National Weather Service (NWS) wrote at 2:00 pm EDT Wednesday.
"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica."
"On the forecast track, the center of Beryl will pass near or over Jamaica during the next several hours. After that, the center is expected to pass near or over the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday and move over the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico Thursday night or early Friday," NWS said.
While the agency predicted the storm would weaken somewhat over the next two days, it "is forecast to be at or near major hurricane intensity while it passes near Jamaica during the next several hours and the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday."
"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica," AccuWeather's chief meteorologist Jon Porter said, adding that Beryl was "the strongest and most dangerous hurricane threat that Jamaica has faced, probably, in decades."
Oliver Mair, Jamaica's consul general in Miami, toldThe Washington Post that the hurricane was "almost like a game-changer."
"To have this size hurricane so early in the season, it's frightening," Mair said.
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'Historic' Category 5 Hurricane Beryl Offers Terrifying View of Future
"Beryl isn't 'unbelievable,'" one expert said. "it's what happens when you heat up the planet with fossil fuel pollution for decades."
Jul 02, 2024
As Hurricane Beryl barreled toward Jamaica on Tuesday after killing at least four people in the Caribbean's Windward Islands, climate scientists warned the record-breaking Category 5 storm is a present-tense example of what's to come on a rapidly heating planet.
Even before the Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted an 85% chance of above-normal activity and 17-25 total named storms this year. Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, highlighted some records Beryl has already broken.
"There is a strong, well-documented link between the effects of human-induced climate change and the development of stronger, wetter storms that are more prone to rapidly intensify," he wrote Tuesday. "Beryl sprung from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in just 48 hours, the fastest any storm on record has strengthened before the month of September."
Beryl is also the earliest Category 4 and 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic, Cappucci pointed out. Previously, the earliest storm to reach the top level of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was Emily, in mid-July of 2005.
The Capital Weather Gang reported that Beryl "strengthened more Monday night, its peak winds climbing to 165 mph. It has surpassed Emily (2005) as strongest July hurricane on record. It's early July but Atlantic is acting like late August."
Certified consulting meteorologist Chris Gloninger emphasized that "the climate crisis has led to well-above-average ocean water temperatures and helped this storm explode."
As Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Potsdam University explained: "The heat in the upper ocean is the energy source for tropical cyclones. This heat is at record level, mainly caused by emissions from burning fossil fuel. That's why an extreme hurricane season has been predicted for this year. It's off to a bad start!"
Colorado State University meteorologist Philip Klotzbach on Monday shared graphics showing that "Caribbean ocean heat content today is normally what we get in the middle of September."
While some expressed disbelief over the storm, CNN extreme weather editor Eric Zerkel stressed that "Beryl isn't 'unbelievable' or 'defying all logic,' it's what happens when you heat up the planet with fossil fuel pollution for decades. The oceans store roughly 90% of that excess heat. The ocean is as warm as it typically is... when Category 4 storms form. June is now August."
Acknowledging Beryl's strength, Steve Bowen, a meteorologist who serves as chief science officer at the global reinsurance firm Gallagher Re, concluded that "this is a massive warning sign for the rest of the season."
Looking beyond this hurricane season, which ends in November, University of Hawaii at Mānoa professor and [C]Worthy co-founder David Ho said, "Let's remember that things are just going to get [worse] as we continue to consume nearly 100 million barrels of oil every day."
The "historic" storm is sparking calls for action to phase out fossil fuels across the globe. Noting how Beryl "is breaking records and leaving a trail of destruction throughout the Caribbean," the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement argued that "we must prosecute Big Oil for their role in causing devastation like this."
In response to a climate scientist who shared a photo of some damage Beryl has already caused, Rahmstorf expressed hope that people around the world won't "wait with voting for climate stabilization until extremes hit their homes."
Beryl made landfall Monday as a Category 4 hurricane on Carriacou, a Grenada island, and also affected St. Vincent and Grenadines. According toThe Associated Press, at least four people were killed.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Tuesday afternoon that on its current path, "the center of Beryl will move quickly across the central Caribbean Sea today and is forecast to pass near Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands on Thursday. The center is forecast to approach the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico on Thursday night."
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