Shas­tri Boodan

Gov­ern­ment has been en­gaged with both the De­moc­rats and the Re­pub­li­cans in its at­tempts to se­cure T&T’s Drag­on Gas deal with Venezuela, de­clared Stu­art Young, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries when he ad­dressed the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) on Sat­ur­day. Young said this was be­ing done through T&T’s con­tin­ued en­gage­ments with par­ties in Wash­ing­ton (the Unit­ed States cap­i­tal).

He was at the time speak­ing at the CCIC’s an­nu­al Christ­mas din­ner and awards func­tion at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas.

Young said fol­low­ing the out­come of the re­cent US elec­tion the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has been hold­ing talks.

He 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.”

Young said the gov­ern­ment has se­cured a 30-year li­cense for the Drag­on field with the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and a two-year OFAC li­cense from the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment that he as­sured would be hon­ored un­til it ex­pires in Oc­to­ber 2025. 

Young knocked the naysay­ers who are against the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on Field.  “Re­cent­ly I heard peo­ple say­ing they are go­ing to write Pres­i­dent Trump’s Gov­ern­ment (re­fer­ring to 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 said.