T&T has been grant­ed ad­di­tion­al time by the Unit­ed States to fur­ther ex­plore and de­vel­op the Drag­on Gas Field ex­plo­ration agree­ment with Venezuela and, more im­por­tant­ly, can now pay for the arrange­ment in US, Bo­li­vars or Fi­at cur­ren­cy.

In an­nounc­ing the lat­est de­vel­op­ments dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of En­er­gy in Port-of-Spain last evening, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said it was done via the grant­i­ng of a “sig­nif­i­cant amend­ment to our OFAC li­cence”.

He said the good news had been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to him around mid­day yes­ter­day via their lawyers in Wash­ing­ton, fol­low­ing which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who is cur­rent­ly in Cana­da for the first-ever Cana­da-Cari­com Sum­mit, was im­me­di­ate­ly ap­prised; along with Venezuela Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez.

Young said, “The US gov­ern­ment has is­sued, through the Trea­sury De­part­ment, OFAC, to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, an amend­ment to the li­cence that we had re­quest­ed, in the terms that we have re­quest­ed.”

The Of­fice of Fi­nan­cial As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) con­tin­u­al­ly main­tains a num­ber of sanc­tions lists on be­half of the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Trea­sury.

Young ex­plained that T&T’s amend­ed li­cence will now run for two years un­til Oc­to­ber 31, 2025.

T&T had ini­tial­ly been grant­ed a two-year li­cence to ex­plore the gas field, which is in Venezue­lan wa­ters, in Jan­u­ary.

Young claimed the amend­ment to the li­cence would pro­vide T&T with, “more than enough time for us to get done what needs to get done”.

He was un­able to re­veal the full de­tails as­so­ci­at­ed with the project due to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty claus­es, but not­ed, “It al­so al­lows the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, work­ing along with NGC and Shell, to ne­go­ti­ate com­plete ne­go­ti­a­tions and all agree­ments with the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and PDVSA for the de­vel­op­ment and the pro­duc­tion, and the ex­port of that gas from the Drag­on Gas Field in­to T&T for us to de­vel­op it, and for us to make pay­ments in Fi­at cur­ren­cy, as well as US dol­lars, as well as Bo­li­vars, as well as via hu­man­i­tar­i­an mea­sures, which was what was en­vis­aged ini­tial­ly.”

Young con­tin­ued, “That OFAC li­cence now is a full green light for us to be able to do what needs to be done.”

In the mean­time, he said T&T con­tin­ues to en­gage Venezuela and PDVSA via vir­tu­al meet­ings as they seek to work out what he said were the “gran­u­lar lev­el of de­tail for the pric­ing and for the de­vel­op­ment of the gas for Drag­on”.

Re­veal­ing that he will soon be lead­ing a team back to Venezuela to fi­nalise arrange­ments, the min­is­ter said it was not over yet de­spite what the naysay­ers were say­ing.

In ad­di­tion to work­ing out the com­mer­cial terms, Young said they were al­so work­ing out the tech­ni­cal terms with Shell’s en­gi­neers on how quick­ly the gas could be brought to T&T for pro­cess­ing.

He boast­ed that T&T had been one of the first coun­try’s to re­ceive a sig­nif­i­cant OFAC li­cence to be able to pur­sue the Drag­on Gas Field.

Pressed on how soon T&T could re­alise a re­turn on this in­vest­ment, Young smiled as he said, “There’s still a few hur­dles that we have to get across.”

Not­ing they were con­tin­u­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, he added, “If we had all of the green lights to press go from to­day, mean­ing all of the ap­provals, all of the agree­ments in place...the bring­ing of the gas to the Hi­bis­cus plat­form could be done in less than two years.”

T&T and Venezuela signed the agree­ment to joint­ly ex­plore the Drag­on Gas Field last month.

Young and Venezuela’s Oil Min­is­ter Pe­dro Tel­lechea signed the agree­ment on Sep­tem­ber 9 at Mi­raflo­res, which is the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

In Jan­u­ary, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden grant­ed T&T a waiv­er on 2019 Venezue­lan sanc­tions, al­low­ing the Drag­on deal ne­go­ti­a­tions to go for­ward.