KEVIN RAM­NAR­INE

Since be­com­ing Pres­i­dent of Venezuela in 2013, Nicholas Maduro has vis­it­ed T&T three times. His vis­it yes­ter­day came against the back­drop of a Venezuela in a deep and pro­longed cri­sis that aris­es out of a spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure of so­cial­ist ide­ol­o­gy.

The col­lapse (or col­laps­ing) of Venezuela has had a long tail. As far back as 2009, Venezue­lan-based oil com­pa­ny ex­pats were fre­quent­ing Hi-lo in Mar­aval to get ba­sic food items. Ev­i­dence of the col­lapse can al­so be seen in Ce­dros where Venezue­lans go to get ba­sic gro­ceries, med­ical sup­plies and toi­letries.

We would be com­pla­cent if we turned a blind eye to what is hap­pen­ing next door and if we fail to pre­pare for its po­ten­tial im­pli­ca­tions. The old say­ing "if your neigh­bour's house is on fire wet yours" holds true. We have seen what has hap­pened to Lebanon which has been over-run with refugees from neigh­bour­ing Syr­ia. I don't know if that can hap­pen here but we can­not rule out such a sce­nario.

What went wrong in Venezuela? Every day on so­cial me­dia we read about the lat­est bad news from Venezuela. Last week the New York Times ran a sto­ry of a Venezue­lan Hos­pi­tal where the con­di­tions are squalid and there are short­ages of med­ica­tion. In 1999 when Venezuela elect­ed Hugo Chavez they chose to walk down a so­cial­ist path. There was, at the time, a strong sen­ti­ment that the coun­try's vast oil wealth had not ben­e­fit­ted the mass­es es­pe­cial­ly the mil­lions liv­ing in the Bar­rios of Cara­cas. It was from the dis­af­fect­ed poor that Chavez formed his base.

The so­cial­ist path turned out to be Venezuela's "road to serf­dom" and Chavez's dream of a so­cial­ist utopia turned in­to an Or­wellian dystopia. The Road to Serf­dom is the ti­tle of one of the most in­flu­en­tial books of the 20th cen­tu­ry. It was writ­ten by Friedrich Von Hayek. Hayek's cen­tral the­sis says that with­out eco­nom­ic free­dom there can be no po­lit­i­cal free­dom. Hayek al­so be­lieved that democ­ra­cy and free­dom were in­com­pat­i­ble with a cen­tral­ly planned econ­o­my. Cen­tral plan­ning, Hayek ar­gued, led to to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism.

The ev­i­dence of the de­cay in Venezuela is every­where. In­fla­tion is off the charts, Cara­cas is one of the mur­der cap­i­tals of the world, there are short­ages of every­thing and now there are black­outs. A coun­try must be able to af­ford so­cial­ism. For a while the high price of oil fi­nanced the Bo­li­var­i­an rev­o­lu­tion. This is no longer the case. In ad­di­tion to low­er oil prices, Venezuela's oil pro­duc­tion is falling.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, how­ev­er, as the world bears wit­ness to Venezuela's de­cline, Nicholas Maduro can al­ways bank on sup­port from the T&T-based Joint Trade Union Move­ment. One lo­cal trade union leader who al­ways sees smoke and warns of fire re­cent­ly said the IMF is bad and its poli­cies have failed. He needs to tell us about his views on so­cial­ism which has wrecked many a Latin Amer­i­can econ­o­my.

The cur­rent state of Venezuela is both a threat to T&T and an op­por­tu­ni­ty. In the en­er­gy re­la­tion­ship op­por­tu­ni­ty abounds. The cri­sis means that Venezuela needs cash fast while T&T needs nat­ur­al gas as soon as pos­si­ble. There­in lies an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of cross bor­der re­serves.

Be­tween 2013 and 2015, I signed three agree­ments aimed at de­vel­op­ing cross bor­der re­serves with my coun­ter­parts, for­mer Min­is­ters Rafael Ramirez and As­drubal Chavez. These were for the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee and Couci­na-Man­akin gas fields.

For years the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment was in­sis­tent that their nat­ur­al gas must be processed and com­mer­cialised on­ly in Venezuela. Over the years, thanks to strate­gic diplo­ma­cy, that po­si­tion be­gan to thaw.

To­wards the end of my tenure as Min­is­ter of En­er­gy of T&T, Venezuela's po­si­tion on this mat­ter changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly and they in­di­cat­ed as much in writ­ing.

The lat­est vis­it of Pres­i­dent Maduro, I sus­pect, would have treat­ed with the mat­ter of Venezuela sell­ing some of its nat­ur­al gas in the Mariscal Su­cre re­gion to T&T. Note that this is not cross bor­der gas. This gas be­longs to Venezuela. The com­pa­ny that owns these fields is Petroleos de Venezuela or PdVsa which is 100 per cent State owned. The Mariscal Su­cre fields in­clude four fields lo­cat­ed in the north-east of the Paria Penin­su­la. They are called Drag�n, Patao, Mejil­lones and R�o Caribe.

The Drag­on field is lo­cat­ed less than 15 miles from nat­ur­al gas in­fra­struc­ture in T&T's wa­ters. If this can work and Venezuela can ex­port nat­ur­al gas from Drag­on to T&T it would help with our short­age of nat­ur­al gas. This is noth­ing new, Nor­way ex­ports nat­ur­al gas to Ger­many via sub-sea pipeline.

As Venezuela's neigh­bour we must keep an eye on the flow of peo­ple in­to our coun­try. As a coun­try in need of new sources of nat­ur­al gas we must be strate­gic. It is in­evitable that the day will come when Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas will flow in­to Point Lisas and per­haps to the LNG in­dus­try. When that hap­pens it will mean we would have ex­tend­ed the life of the gas econ­o­my of T&T.