Caracas, Venezuela (AFP)—Guyana has expelled a group of 75 Venezuelans, including children, discovered on a boat intercepted this week near an oil-rich region at the heart of a diplomatic standoff between the neighbors, the government in Georgetown said.

A statement issued late Tuesday said the boat was spotted by a police patrol in waters off the coast of Essequibo, a region that has been administered by Guyana for over a century but is also claimed by Venezuela.

The statement, accompanied by a photo of the precarious, two-engined vessel, said the group of 57 men, nine women and nine children were spotted Monday after failing “to present themselves to the Immigration Department.”

“They were treated humanely, provided with the basic necessities” and deported Tuesday to troubled Venezuela — the source of much of the world’s illegal migration.

Earlier this month, a Venezuelan military vessel entered waters off the Essequibo coast, prompting protest from Georgetown.

A year ago, the parliament in Caracas approved a bill to make Essequibo Venezuela’s 24th state, a move rejected as invalid by Guyana and other nations.

Venezuela has subsequently announced it would include the region in gubernatorial elections on May 25 — prompting Guyana to approach the UN’s highest court for relief.

Guyana, a small English-speaking former British and Dutch colony, insists Essequibo’s frontiers were determined by an arbitration panel in 1899.

But Venezuela claims the Essequibo River to the region’s east forms a natural border recognized as far back as 1777.

The long-running squabble was revived in 2015 after US energy giant ExxonMobil discovered huge crude reserves in Essequibo and reached fever pitch in 2023 when Georgetown started auctioning off oil blocks in the region.

The find gave Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world.

Essequibo makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens.