On Mon­day, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro an­nounced that his ad­min­is­tra­tion had agreed to sus­pend all the en­er­gy (nat­ur­al gas) agree­ments be­tween his coun­try and T&T.

“I ap­proved the pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure of sus­pend­ing the agree­ment and re­quest­ed that the case be re­ferred to the Coun­cil of State, the Supreme Court of Jus­tice, and the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly to take struc­tur­al mea­sures in this mat­ter,” the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent said in his Mon­day af­ter­noon tele­vised broad­cast on Venezuela’s state-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion.

In ef­fect, Venezuela de­nounced a 10-year frame­work en­er­gy agree­ment that was signed with T&T in 2015 and was re­newed in Feb­ru­ary for five more years.

On Mon­day, as well, Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Pres­i­dent Jorge Ro­dríguez said, “Let’s see if you don’t need the gas from Venezuela, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Let’s see if it wasn’t gen­er­ous, as it was that en­er­gy agree­ment signed be­tween one of the largest gas re­serves on the plan­et and a coun­try that com­plete­ly ex­haust­ed its gas re­serves. It’s the truth.”

“The on­ly re­al hope that the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go had was to re­cov­er through this agree­ment the hy­dro­car­bon trade, which is al­ready at its low­est lev­el. Let’s see if you need it or not.

In an ap­par­ent re­sponse to the com­ments of Mr Ro­driguez, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued What­sApp mes­sages to me­dia hous­es in T&T.

“Our fu­ture does not de­pend on Venezuela and nev­er has. We have our plans and projects to grow our econ­o­my with­in the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors,” she stat­ed.

Re­spond­ing to be­ing ef­fec­tive­ly barred from Venezuela, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia, “Venezue­lans are flee­ing Venezuela by the mil­lions, so why would they think I would want to go there?”

What is clear from the back and forth of vit­ri­olic com­ments be­tween Cara­cas and Port-of-Spain so far this week is that if Pres­i­dent Maduro re­tains pow­er, the chances of Drag­on gas ever flow­ing to T&T are slim to none.

If his stay in the Mi­raflo­res Palace is short­lived, T&T’s prospects are bet­ter, but still not great.

So, the live ques­tion for T&T is this: Does this coun­try need nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela to be able to sus­tain the LNG and petro­chem­i­cal plants that have been es­tab­lished at Point Fortin and Point Lisas, most­ly in the last 30 years?

A hint of the an­swer to that ques­tion came on Oc­to­ber 1, when Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar got her first op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak pub­licly on the ma­jor de­vel­op­ment that came out of her vis­it to Wash­ing­ton DC, on Sep­tem­ber 30, when she met with US Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio.

Mr Ru­bio’s of­fice is­sued a read­out of his dis­cus­sion with Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar that same day, which in­clud­ed the fol­low­ing com­ments, “The Sec­re­tary ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty. He out­lined US sup­port for the gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al and steps to en­sure it will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to Maduro.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from se­nior Guardian Me­dia re­porter/pro­duc­er, Da­reece Po­lo at the VIP lounge of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter re­turn­ing from the US, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter said:

“Be­fore we went, (Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs) Sean Sobers and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, were very con­cerned. They didn’t think we would get it. I kept telling them, God is great and that we will get it. We will get it. I just didn’t know when we would get that OFAC li­cence.

“It was not easy. You may think it hap­pened overnight. It did not. In fact, from day one, when we came in­to of­fice, we be­gan work on that OFAC li­cense; and we had dis­cus­sions fur­ther with Sec­re­tary Ru­bio on oth­er fields, the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee field and the Co­quina/Man­akin (field).

“So we look for fur­ther progress in these fields, what­ev­er is hap­pen­ing with these and we start with the drag­on that has come alive again, re­sus­ci­tat­ed that first deal, and the oth­ers all the way this deal, but the agree­ments that have been reached, we will work with de­tails out and share them with you.”

What is very in­ter­est­ing and note­wor­thy about the T&T Prime Min­is­ter’s words was her com­ment that “in fact, from day one, when we came in­to of­fice, we be­gan work on that OFAC li­cence.”

That com­ment is very in­ter­est­ing and note­wor­thy be­cause, lit­er­al­ly, on day one, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s nar­ra­tive was di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to her com­ment on Oc­to­ber 1.

On May 3, the day most of the Cab­i­net of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion was sworn in, the T&T leader was asked about the Drag­on gas de­vel­op­ment.

“That is dead. It is dead. They kept it alive for 10 years and if they could not do that in 10 years, we are not go­ing to do that now,” she said, flanked by Phillip Alexan­der, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing, and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Ques­tions:

* If the Drag­on gas project was dead on May 3, what tran­spired be­tween then and Oc­to­ber 1, to cause the project to “come alive again?”

* How could Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar be so dis­mis­sive of the prospects of the Drag­on gas project on May 3, but state on Oc­to­ber 1 that “from day one, when we came in­to of­fice, we be­gan work on that OFAC li­cense?”

* Would the mem­bers of the T&T Cab­i­net work on some­thing that their leader de­clared was dead on the day most of the Cab­i­net was sworn in?

* What does the com­ment “I kept telling them, God is great and that we will get it,” sug­gest to the or­di­nary read­er?

* Al­so, what is the mean­ing of “Our fu­ture does not de­pend on Venezuela and nev­er has?”

My un­der­stand­ing of the rea­son the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion spent so much time and mon­ey seek­ing to get nat­ur­al gas flow­ing from Venezuela to Trinidad is that the even the op­ti­mistic pro­jec­tions for the nat­ur­al gas from es­tab­lished T&T-on­ly sources (that is no Drag­on, Man­a­tee or Man­akin gas) en­vis­age pro­duc­tion lev­els would stay at 2.5 bcf of gas.

The Venezue­lan gas is im­por­tant be­cause at 2.5 bcf, there is sim­ply not enough of the com­mod­i­ty to sup­ply to all the LNG trains and the petro­chem­i­cal users. And all of the ex­perts say that process plants, such as LNG and petro­chem­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties, need to op­er­ate at as close to 100 per cent ef­fi­cien­cy to be ef­fec­tive and com­pet­i­tive.

So the ques­tions are:

* If we do not have ac­cess to Venezue­lan nat­ur­al, are we still go­ing to have LNG trains and petro­chem­i­cal plants in five years?

* What do T&T’s for­eign ex­change earn­ings look like with­out LNG and petro­chem­i­cal rev­enues?