PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal pres­sures in the Unit­ed States have led to the Caribbean not get­ting a fair shake con­cern­ing en­er­gy deals con­nect­ed to Venezuela.

Speak­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency on yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and Grenadines, Ralph Gon­salves, not­ed that the Unit­ed States has been con­ve­nient­ly re­lax­ing its rules for spe­cif­ic en­ti­ties, yet show­ing an­oth­er face to the Caribbean.

“In the case of Venezuela, as soon as there’s a prob­lem in Ukraine, and the pipeline from Rus­sia, the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment gives a bligh, as the Ja­maicans would say, to the Eu­ro­peans to go and deal with Venezuela in re­la­tion to oil. They give per­mis­sion to Chevron to talk to Venezuela about ex­ploit­ing re­sources and pay­ing Venezuela in US dol­lars. But yet, you don’t want Venezuela to do it with Petro­Caribe,” said Gon­salves, when asked about Cari­com’s in­ter­est in the per­mis­sion grant­ed to T&T by the US to ex­plore the Drag­on nat­ur­al gas field in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

The US grant­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go a two-year li­cence to op­er­ate in the gas field.

On Jan­u­ary 24, 2023, the US De­part­ment of the Trea­sury’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol’s is­sued a li­cence to Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­vel­op the Drag­on nat­ur­al gas field, but with a stip­u­la­tion that there must be no mon­e­tary pay­ment.

The li­cence is “in­tend­ed to en­hance Caribbean re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty” and “means the is­land na­tion can do busi­ness re­lat­ed to the Drag­on gas field with Venezuela’s heav­i­ly sanc­tioned state-run oil com­pa­ny,” PDVSA, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment re­ports ear­li­er this year.

“And that you’re still say­ing well, Trinidad can go and do a deal with Venezuela. Well, we’re not so sure if you could pay them in US dol­lars. Are you telling me that the strug­gle is be­tween democ­ra­cy and au­toc­ra­cy? Naked self-in­ter­est. Part of my job as the leader of a small, in­de­pen­dent coun­try is to point out these kinds of in­con­sis­ten­cies, po­si­tions which af­fect us neg­a­tive­ly,” said Gon­salves at the Hy­att Re­gency, who stressed that de­spite dis­agree­ing with its stance on these is­sues, his coun­try con­tin­ued to have a great re­la­tion­ship with the US.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out that much of the sanc­tions en­forced by the US on Venezuela were con­nect­ed to in­ter­nal pol­i­tics, but Cari­com would con­tin­ue to raise the is­sue.

“We have been push­ing the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. You have to un­der­stand this. No mat­ter what the US gov­ern­ment tells you about Venezuela and democ­ra­cy and hu­man rights, I don’t take those things at face val­ue.

“US pol­i­cy on Venezuela, Cu­ba and Nicaragua, they are pris­on­ers of the pres­i­den­tial, gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al, sen­a­to­r­i­al and con­gres­sion­al pol­i­tics of South Flori­da.

“Be­cause of the strength of the Latin vote, and par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber against the Cuban rev­o­lu­tion against the changes tak­ing place in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” Gon­salves said.