Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has said that the gov­ern­ment does not know as yet if the US sanc­tions on Venezuela's state-owned oil com­pa­ny PDVSA would af­fect­ed the gas deal be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"We are seek­ing ad­vice to de­ter­mine how they may af­fect the deal," Young said in re­sponse to a ques­tion by Op­po­si­tion Leader in the Sen­ate, Wade Mark.

He said it was pre­ma­ture at this time to say what, if any, ef­fects it may have.

The US an­nounced on Mon­day that it was im­ple­ment­ing sanc­tions against PDVSA, which will in­volve all rev­enue earned from the sale of oil and gas in the US, be­ing placed in­to a blocked ac­count in­ac­ces­si­ble to the cur­rent Maduro-led regime.

The US has recog­nised the head of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, Juan Guai­do, as the in­ter­im pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

In No­vem­ber 2018, op­po­si­tion law­mak­er and mem­ber of the Venezue­lan As­sem­bly, Car­los Valero warned Gov­ern­ment that any treaties or con­tracts signed be­tween the two coun­tries and which had not been passed by the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly in Venezuela might not be ho­n­oured in the fu­ture.

Valero had claimed the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly was the on­ly le­git­i­mate body in Venezuela with the au­thor­i­ty to en­sure that agree­ments were le­gal and would be ho­n­oured mov­ing for­ward.

Valero urged lo­cal law-mak­ers not to be swayed or ma­nip­u­lat­ed by the promis­es of the cur­rent Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tion.

On Au­gust 27, 2018 the Prime Min­is­ter and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro signed an agree­ment in Cara­cas that will al­low the is­land to ac­cess gas from the off­shore Drag­on field.

Row­ley had told the me­dia then, “We may have been able to save our in­dus­try by get­ting a se­cure source of gas for the down­stream sec­tor. It may over time al­so al­low us to look at the ex­pan­sion of the down­stream sec­tor and in­vest­ments there, as long as we can show in­vestors we have a se­cured stream of gas.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was not will­ing to dis­close the price of the gas, point­ing to com­mer­cial con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, but he re­vealed it will be 150 mil­li­on stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d), with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of it in­creas­ing to 300 mm­scf/d.

The pipeline car­ry­ing the gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas field in East­ern Venezuela to Shell’s Hi­bis­cus plat­form off the North Coast will be built and owned in a joint ven­ture be­tween the NGC and Shell Trinidad.

The es­ti­mat­ed cost of the con­struc­tion of the pipeline is close to TT $1 bil­li­on.

T&T has been suf­fer­ing from gas cur­tail­ment for the last six years and it has led to a short­fall in the pro­duc­tion of all the com­mo­di­ties in­clud­ing LNG and Petro­chem­i­cals and as a con­se­quence sig­nif­i­cant loss of rev­enue to the trea­sure and for­eign ex­change.

Trinidad and To­ba­go will re­ceive its first gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Field in 2020, ac­cord­ing to Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic’s Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Manuel Queve­do.