Venezuela – A Deliberate Devastation?

[This article by Peter Koenig was originally published by Global Research. You can read it here.]

Was the Venezuela quake a natural disaster?

Or a man-made disaster?

Venezuela’s two big quakes of 24 June 2026 (7.2 followed less than a minute later by one of 7.5 Richter scale), also called a “doublet”, apparently did not happen because the country sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

They happened because northern Venezuela lies on the active boundary between the Caribbean and South American plates, where major strike-slip faults like the Boconó and San Sebastián systems build up and release stress.

[Image: Map of the Pacific Ring of Fire - click here for an enlarged view]

Connection to the Ring of Fire

The Ring of Fire is the circum-Pacific belt around the Pacific Plate, and it is a different tectonic system from Venezuela’s plate boundary. Venezuela belongs to the Caribbean–South America margin, not the Pacific subduction ring.

So, is it then a sheer “coincidence” that almost simultaneously happened a series of lesser Pacific Ring of Fire seismic tremors, of about 5 to 6 Richter strength?

They included Japan: offshore of Iwate Prefecture along the Japan Trench, at magnitude 6.9 and Northern California, near Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, at magnitude 5.6, plus a number of lesser ones, in the Philippines, especially the southern Philippines / Mindanao (though, this was reported with 7.8), which is repeatedly cited in Ring of Fire quakes; Papua New Guinea (PNG); Solomon Islands and nearby Pacific islands, which are commonly grouped with PNG in the same seismic belt.

As of the latest confirmed reporting, 2 July 2026, the Venezuela earthquakes on 24 June 2026 had killed 1,719 people. The number of missing was, according to Reuters, 55,000, while Euronews cited up to 68,000 missing, meaning the death toll may rise substantially.

UNDP estimates direct physical damage at about US$6.7 billion, with a stated range of US$4.7 billion to US$8.7 billion. It does not include wider economic disruption costs, infrastructure knock-on effects, or long-term reconstruction expenses. UNDP also notes that the total impact is usually much higher, often around 1.5 to 3 times the direct damage.

A rough, commonly cited Venezuelan Government valuation of her hydrocarbon riches is about US$18 trillion, an approximate figure confirmed by Forbes, using a conservative oil price around $60 per barrel.

Given the sophisticated weather engineering technologies, including earthquakes, the US controls (see this), is a legitimate, intellectually honest question: The “coincidence” is striking, the geopolitical context is suggestive (full re-imposition of the new Monroe (Donroe) doctrine, plus Venezuela being the world’s hydrocarbon-richest country), in this shape-shifting day and age we are living, is it reasonable to ask whether more is going on than meets the eye?

Could the Venezuelan seismic shocks have been placed deliberately in the context of the vulnerable Pacific Ring of Fire, where earthquakes are frequent? For now, it remains an open question, not (yet) a demonstrated fact.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst, regular author for Global Research, and a former Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.