The Gov­ern­ment of T&T and the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela have signed a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment with the Veneuze­lan gov­ern­ment in the next step of the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions to ac­ti­vate the Drag­on Gas field in Venezue­lan.

It comes as Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young made his third trip to Cara­cas since Feb­ru­ary when the Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) grant­ed T&T waiv­er from sanc­tions, open­ing the door to do busi­ness with Venezuela.

Young wrote on his Face­book page, “We ex­e­cut­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment (non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment) which gov­erns the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the par­ties and the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion as we progress the tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial as­pects of the planned de­vel­op­ment.”

He said the T&T in­clud­ed the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Pen­ne­lope Brad­shaw Niles, pres­i­dent of NGC Mark Lo­quan, T&T’s Am­bas­sador to Venezuela Ma­jor Gen­er­al (Ret’d) Ed­mund Dil­lon, and oth­er mem­bers from NGC’s ex­ec­u­tive.

Eu­gene Okpere, se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Shell T&T and oth­er mem­bers of Shell al­so joined the del­e­ga­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Young, Venezuela’s team was led by Pres­i­dent of PDVSA Pe­dro Rafael Tel­lechea, who was sup­port­ed by vice pres­i­dents of PDVSA and oth­er key mem­bers of PDVSA.

Young has been very tight lipped about his trips and the state of ne­go­ti­a­tions. Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence last month, Young hint­ed they had man­aged to al­lay con­cerns by the Maduro gov­ern­ment over the lack of cash pay­ments in the deal, al­though he didn’t say how. He, at the time, al­so said there was noth­ing in the deal which con­cerned or wor­ried the gov­ern­ment of T&T.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain in Jan­u­ary, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley said T&T ex­pects to gain ac­cess to 350 mil­lion cu­bic feet of gas per day from the Drag­on field.

He said he ap­plied for the li­cense in mid-2022 and won ap­proval af­ter dis­cussing it with top US of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, while al­so keep­ing open a chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

Venezuela’s State en­er­gy com­pa­ny, PDVSA, found re­serves of 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet (TCF) in Drag­on, on the Venezue­lan side of its mar­itime bor­der with Trinidad.

T&T is ea­ger to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on gas field to but­tress its de­clin­ing out­put of nat­ur­al gas, which has long been the largest source of for­eign ex­change for the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

The li­cence will al­low PDVSA, Shell and Trinidad to joint­ly plan and de­vel­op a gas-ex­port­ing project af­ter agree­ing to pend­ing de­tails in com­ing days.

A por­tion of the re­sult­ing gas must be ex­port­ed to Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, ac­cord­ing to the two-year li­cens­es terms, Row­ley said.