El Tigre is a city of Venezuela located in the state Anzoátegui. It is the capital of Simón Rodríguez Municipality and it is located south in Anzoategui state, equidistant from the Orinoco River and the Caribbean Sea in the Guanipa Mesa at 295 m altitude, crossed by the Tigre River; with an average temperature of 79 °F and an annual average rainfall of 1,200 mm. One nearby tourist destination is the Chimire Cliffs. El Tigre also is in full conurbation with the city of San Jose de Guanipa also known as El Tigrito, capital of the Guanipa Municipality whose population according to data from the CNE is 84,526 inhabitants. Both cities are basically one, whose population would be 291,472 inhabitants. Since the appointment of Orinoco Belt as one of the largest reserves of oil in the world, El Tigre has become one of the most important cities in Venezuela because it is very near or on the edge of this oil belt in Anzoategui state. Thus, El Tigre currently shows an increase in the establishment of companies of services to the oil industry that is constantly growing and have also been presented innumerable construction projects for new shopping malls, business buildings or towers and other works for the significant activation of tourism.
History
In the 1930s a large field of light crude oil was discovered near El Tigrito by the Mene Grande Oil Company, a subsidiary of Gulf Oil Corporation. The Oficina No. 1 well, a wildcat well begun in 1933 and completed in 1937, established the highly productive Oficina Formation. The oil discovery led to the founding of El Tigre on February 23, 1933 when Mene Grande established their offices in Campo Oficina. El Tigre quickly became a boomtown. The name "Oficina" was derived from the telegraph office in El Tigrito. Until the oil discovery, the area had been sparsely populated. By 1940 a road and an oil pipeline had been constructed to connect El Tigre with Puerto La Cruz. By 1946, 512 wells had been drilled, and the region had produced 127 million barrels of oil. The nearby oil company camp San Tomé was built near El Tigre as the main camp for Mene Grande.
Demographics
The Simón Rodríguez Municipality, according to the 2011 Venezuelan census, has a population of 194,858 inhabitants. This amounts to 12.4% of Anzoátegui's population.
Limits
About the territorial extension of the municipality in which the city is located, it is 702 km2 and delimited by the following territories: Northeast: borders the municipalities Pedro Maria Freites and Guanipa. South: bordering the municipality Francisco de Miranda. East: borders the municipality Guanipa. West: bordering the municipality Francisco de Miranda. Southeast: municipalities bordering Guanipa and Independencia.
Weather
The climate is of savannah and temperatures ranging between 68 °F and 96.8 °F, with an average of 80.6 °F approximately.
El Tigre is the shire town of the Simón Rodríguez Municipality in Anzoátegui. The mayor of the Simón Rodríguez Municipality is Ernesto Raydan, elected in 2017 with 51.95% of the votes.
