Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The T&T Gov­ern­ment has been lob­by­ing De­mo­c­ra­t­ic and Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers in a bid to pro­tect the Drag­on gas deal.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young dis­closed on Sat­ur­day that the Gov­ern­ment has been en­gag­ing both the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic and Re­pub­li­can par­ties in its ef­forts to se­cure T&T’s Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela.

He was speak­ing at the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) an­nu­al Christ­mas din­ner and awards func­tion at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas.

Young said, “We re­main very con­nect­ed with the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States to try and en­sure we se­cure the fu­ture of these projects. Our part­ner in that project, 70 per cent, is Shell, which is the largest LNG trad­er in the world. It was on­ly two week­ends ago I was in Lon­don, spend­ing a Fri­day with Shell and Sat­ur­day with BP, se­cur­ing our fu­ture to make sure they are on the same pages.” T&T has been short of nat­ur­al gas to pow­er its petro­chem­i­cal and LNG fa­cil­i­ties; there­fore, the Drag­on gas deal is seen as a very cru­cial part of the Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy to in­crease its nat­ur­al gas out­put.

In 2018, T&T and Venezuela signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing for the joint de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on gas field. How­ev­er, sweep­ing sanc­tions im­posed by the first Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion brought a sus­pen­sion of the project. The US sanc­tions specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed the oil and gas sec­tor as part of its broad­er ef­fort to pres­sure the Gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Young said T&T has se­cured a 30-year li­cence for the Drag­on field with the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and a two-year OFAC li­cence from the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment that he as­sured would be ho­n­oured un­til it ex­pires in Oc­to­ber 2025. An OFAC (Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol) li­cence is an au­tho­ri­sa­tion from the US Trea­sury De­part­ment that al­lows in­di­vid­u­als or en­ti­ties to en­gage in trans­ac­tions that would nor­mal­ly be pro­hib­it­ed due to US sanc­tions.

The Drag­on gas agree­ment, fi­nalised in De­cem­ber 2023, is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in T&T’s en­er­gy col­lab­o­ra­tion with Venezuela.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said two ves­sels paid for by Shell and the T&T Gov­ern­ment are sur­vey­ing the Drag­on field.

Young knocked those who he says are against the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on field, “Re­cent­ly I heard peo­ple say­ing they are go­ing to write Pres­i­dent Trump’s Gov­ern­ment (US Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump) and tell them to in­ves­ti­gate the Drag­on deal and I thought to my­self how ridicu­lous a con­cept is that.

“As a cit­i­zen of T&T, I have ab­solute­ly no fear of what has been signed with Drag­on be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by any­one any­where in the world be­cause, you see, we did that with Shell, and we did it above board with the high­est stan­dards that can stand up to any scruti­ny any­where in the world.”

Young al­so said the Gov­ern­ment has se­cured the rights to de­vel­op the Man­a­tee gas field, one of the largest gas projects in T&T for decades. Part of the Man­a­tee plat­form is be­ing built in T&T.

“We are in the process of se­cur­ing Lo­ran as well,” he added.

He said en­er­gy com­pa­nies are ex­pect­ed to spend US$10 bil­lion by 2027 to de­vel­op T&T’s hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor.

Young al­so told the gath­er­ing that the Gov­ern­ment was lis­ten­ing to the pleas of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in Ch­agua­nas when it came to is­sues of traf­fic, crime, and forex.

Ram­nar­ine: High de­gree of po­lit­i­cal risk

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, who served dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship regime, said the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go would have to en­gage the in­com­ing Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion in Wash­ing­ton. Ram­nar­ine told Guardian Me­dia “The Re­pub­li­cans now con­trol the White House, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and the Sen­ate. I have seen no ev­i­dence that the PNM Gov­ern­ment had es­tab­lished bridges to Re­pub­li­can Sen­a­tors or Con­gress­men in Wash­ing­ton. If they did, that’s nice.

“More­over, the in­com­ing Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, has been one of the biggest crit­ics of the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion. The same can be said of Elon Musk, who will be part of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. It will be in­ter­est­ing to see how the Re­pub­li­cans deal with Venezuela and how that will im­pact the OFAC li­cences re­lat­ed to Drag­on and Couci­na-Man­akin.

“We al­so note that the out­go­ing Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has recog­nised Ed­mun­do Gon­za­les Ur­ru­tia as the Pres­i­dent-elect of Venezuela. I ex­pect that the Trump 2.0 ad­min­is­tra­tion will con­tin­ue with this recog­ni­tion. So, one can rea­son­ably as­sume that there re­mains a high de­gree of po­lit­i­cal risk at­tached to the Drag­on and Couci­na-Man­akin projects, which will weigh heav­i­ly in Shell and BP’s de­ci­sion ma­trix.”