JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Venezuela President Maduro talked energy, transport while in T&T

by

20130717

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro's trip to T&T two weeks ago fol­lowed the vis­its of Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping and US Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to T&T in May.

En­er­gy, trans­porta­tion, se­cu­ri­ty and build­ing bridges with South Amer­i­ca's Mer­co­sur trade bloc were some of the main is­sues on the agen­da when Maduro vis­it­ed T&T on the fi­nal day of the three-day meet­ing of the 34th meet­ing of Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment in Port-of-Spain on Ju­ly 6. This is not the first time that Venezuela and its Eng­lish-speak­ing Cari­com neigh­bours have met to deep­en trade and oth­er eco­nom­ic-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

In Oc­to­ber 1992, the Cari­com/Venezuela agree­ment on trade and in­vest­ment was signed and came in­to force on Jan­u­ary 1, 1993. It al­lowed some Cari­com prod­ucts im­me­di­ate du­ty-free ac­cess to the Venezuela mar­ket, and ad­di­tion­al prod­ucts on a phased ba­sis. Al­ready, steps have been tak­en by Venezuela and T&T to fol­low up on dis­cus­sions that be­gan at the Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing.

Trans­port

Fol­low­ing Maduro's vis­it, a del­e­ga­tion from the Venezue­lan Min­istry of Trans­port vis­it­ed T&T last week to deep­en co-op­er­a­tion in the area of trans­porta­tion. A state­ment from the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day said this is part of the "re­launch­ing of the his­tor­i­cal re­la­tion­ship" be­tween the two coun­tries.

"Last week, on­ly four days af­ter the vis­it of Maduro to T&T, an im­por­tant del­e­ga­tion from the Min­istry of Wa­ter and Air Trans­port had meet­ings with T&T's Min­is­ter of Tourism Stephen Cadiz and Min­is­ter of Trade Vas­ant Bharath, as well as a meet­ing with Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co)," the state­ment said.

Dis­cus­sions were al­so held with re­gard to es­tab­lish­ing a time­frame for new wa­ter-taxi routes as well as Venezue­lan state-owned air­line Con­vi­asa es­tab­lish­ing new routes to T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment from the em­bassy, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has pro­posed to of­fer T&T, the ser­vices of Ven­eve­ga, a state-owned ship­ping com­pa­ny to help move goods with­in the re­gion.

"The re­la­tion­ship seeks to make progress in the con­sol­i­da­tion of the ties that bind two neigh­bour­ing peo­ples de­spite lan­guage bar­ri­er. It starts a stage of re­al co-op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries."

In T&T, Maduro had said Venezuela will ex­pand its fleet of fer­ries to reach the Venezue­lan is­land of Mar­gari­ta, which would even­tu­al­ly be ex­tend­ed to oth­er Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries.

En­er­gy

In her meet­ing with Maduro, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said rep­re­sen­ta­tives of T&T will be­gin talks on Ju­ly 23 with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment on en­er­gy mat­ters, es­pe­cial­ly on re­solv­ing the long out­stand­ing is­sue of the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field, which both coun­tries share.

Sev­en tril­lion cu­bic feet (TCF) is be­lieved to be on Venezuela's side, while three TCF is on T&T's side of the shared bor­der.

"We agreed for a meet­ing to be con­vened in T&T with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Venezuela on or about Ju­ly 23. I am ad­vised there is about ten TCF of re­cov­er­able gas in Block A of the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field," she said.

In 1990, both na­tions signed a De­lim­i­ta­tion Treaty, which sets out the terms on how to ex­ploit hy­dro­car­bon re­serves on both sides of the bor­der. In 2003 the two coun­tries signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing on the pro­ce­dure for the uni­fi­ca­tion of hy­dro­car­bon de­posits.

Ac­cord­ing to BP's An­nu­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Re­view of World En­er­gy in June 2012, Venezuela's de­posits were at 296.5 bil­lion bar­rels, mak­ing it the coun­try with the world's largest proven oil re­serves. It pushed Sau­di Ara­bia in­to sec­ond place, which now holds 265.4 bil­lion bar­rels.

Mer­co­sur and Una­sur

Last Fri­day, Venezuela as­sumed the ro­tat­ing pres­i­den­cy of the South Amer­i­can Com­mon Mar­ket (Mer­co­sur), which it will hold for the next six months.

This trade bloc, found­ed in 1991, is made up of Brazil, Ar­genti­na, Uruguay Paraguay and Venezuela. Mer­co­sur has five as­so­ciate mem­bers–Chile, Bo­livia, Colom­bia, Ecuador and Pe­ru–that do not en­joy full vot­ing rights or com­plete ac­cess to the mar­kets of Mer­co­sur's full mem­bers. They re­ceive tar­iff re­duc­tions, but are not re­quired to im­pose the com­mon ex­ter­nal tar­iff that ap­plies to full Mer­co­sur mem­bers.

The pop­u­la­tion of Mer­co­sur's full mem­ber­ship to­talled more than 260 mil­lion peo­ple in 2011, in­clud­ing Venezuela. It has a col­lec­tive gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) of US$2.9 tril­lion and is the world's fourth largest trad­ing bloc af­ter the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU), North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment (NAF­TA), and the As­so­ci­a­tion of South East Asian Na­tions (ASEAN).

In T&T, Maduro pro­posed to pro­mote a plan to de­vel­op ex­changes be­tween the na­tions of Cari­com and Mer­co­sur.

He said this ex­change of both eco­nom­ic blocs would strength­en re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment bloc of all the coun­tries in­volved.

Maduro said: "Fur­ther ad­vance work and eco­nom­ic joint de­vel­op­ment in Cari­com and Mer­co­sur and move to­wards a con­sol­i­dat­ed de­vel­op­ment zone of our coun­try, that the Caribbean has this huge mar­ket is Brazil, Ar­genti­na, Venezuela , Uruguay. For the Caribbean have in­vest­ment and tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment that emerges of broth­ers."

Apart from Mer­co­sur, Maduro al­so in­vit­ed T&T to be "in­cor­po­rat­ed" in­to Union of South Amer­i­can Na­tions (Una­sur) be­cause of its ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty to the South Amer­i­can main­land.

Una­sur con­sists of all the coun­tries on the South Amer­i­can con­ti­nent.

Eng­lish speak­ing Guyana, which is sit­u­at­ed on the South Amer­i­can main­land next to Brazil and Venezuela is a mem­ber of Cari­com and al­so a mem­ber of Una­sur.

"The 21st cen­tu­ry is the cen­tu­ry of de­vel­op­ment for the peo­ple of the Caribbean," Maduro said.

Counter nar­cotics

Dur­ing his vis­it, Maduro pro­posed a re­gion­al plan to deal with the drug trade.

"We want to build a joint Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty plan. We are vic­tims of in­ter­na­tion­al crime, drug traf­fick­ing, pri­mar­i­ly. Nei­ther of our coun­tries is a pro­duc­er or con­sumer of drugs, yet we are vic­tims of those who pro­duce the drugs," he said.

He said Venezuela shares a long bor­der with Colom­bia and con­tin­ues to work hard to en­sure drugs do not cross the bor­ders the two coun­tries share.

Venezuela's For­eign Min­is­ter Elias Jaua, who ac­com­pa­nied Maduro on his vis­it to T&T, said Venezuela's new Min­is­ter of De­fence Car­men Me­len­dez will vis­it T&T to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored