PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine is in agree­ment with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s as­sess­ment that the Drag­on Gas deal is not dead, de­spite Venezuela not ac­cept­ing the fi­nan­cial terms set by the Unit­ed States con­cern­ing the agree­ment.

The Prime Min­is­ter was asked about the sta­tus of the Drag­on Gas Field dur­ing his ap­pear­ance on a tele­vi­sion morn­ing show on Thurs­day.

“The Venezue­lans have not ac­cept­ed the terms laid down by the Amer­i­cans. That is the long and short of it,” said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­cern­ing the cur­rent sta­tus of the deal.

In Jan­u­ary, the Unit­ed States grant­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go a spe­cial li­cence to ac­cess the Drag­on Gas Field in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

The li­cence was grant­ed for a two-year pe­ri­od ini­tial­ly.

How­ev­er the li­cence came with the con­di­tion that Venezuela could not be paid in cash as part of the deal.

“We fought very hard to get the Amer­i­cans to give us a carve out, which is to al­low us to treat with PDVSA with­out break­ing the sanc­tions. We even­tu­al­ly won that bat­tle but they put a con­di­tion on it which the Venezue­lans, as of now, have not ac­cept­ed,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

He said the T&T gov­ern­ment has con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions with both the US and Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tions to see if a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial arrange­ment can be ne­go­ti­at­ed.

“We are still talk­ing on both sides; we are still ne­go­ti­at­ing. It’s a dis­ap­point­ment for us here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that it is tak­ing so long, or that the de­ci­sions that are be­ing made for oth­er peo­ple’s in­ter­ests are be­ing so detri­men­tal to our in­ter­ests. And the most that we can do is to stay the diplo­mat­ic course. And we made a lot of friends, we’ve opened the doors, and we keep ad­vo­cat­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go in those quar­ters,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

He was then asked if this meant the deal was dead in the wa­ter.

He re­spond­ed, “Well, I wouldn’t say it is dead. We have pro­gressed. We’ve got a term sheet with Venezuela. We’ve got an es­cape from the sanc­tion, but it car­ried some­thing with it. It is still con­nect­ed to the sanc­tions by a con­di­tion. So, we’re work­ing on that con­di­tion to see if we can come to a place which the Venezue­lans can ac­cept, which the Amer­i­cans can ac­cept. And when that day comes, we’d be in a much bet­ter place.”

Ram­nar­ine said that as long as both T&T and Venezuela re­mained in­vest­ed in the deal, it re­mains a po­ten­tial op­tion but at this time it can not be the main fo­cus.

“I agree with the Prime Min­is­ter that it is not dead. Once the Venezue­lans are in­ter­est­ed in it, and we are in­ter­est­ed in it, it is not dead. If the sanc­tions were not there, it would have been ac­cel­er­at­ed. They would have been fur­ther along the way. But now clear­ly, as a coun­try, we can­not bank on this, be­cause no­body could see when this gas would be ready to be pro­duced to Trinidad and To­ba­go. So we can’t plan our econ­o­my for the next ten years based on Drag­on Gas or gas com­ing from Venezuela,” said Ram­nar­ine, who said in­stead fo­cus should be placed on lo­cal deep­wa­ter gas fields.

“I would say to the Prime Min­is­ter, or to any­body who is in gov­ern­ment, we have to make do with what we have and what we have in terms of the re­source base of our coun­try is deep­wa­ter gas. We should be work­ing with Wood­side, which holds 3.5 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas off To­ba­go. We should be work­ing with Wood­side and make that a com­mer­cial re­al­i­ty,” he said.

How­ev­er he not­ed that re­turns from those fields were not ex­pect­ed un­til 2027 and there were al­ready signs of a nat­ur­al gas cri­sis as sev­er­al plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate have cur­tailed or shut down op­er­a­tions due to lim­it­ed gas sup­ply.

En­er­gy econ­o­mist Gre­go­ry McGuire said it was time for the Prime Min­is­ter gov­ern­ment to make pub­lic to the world that the sanc­tions im­posed by the Unit­ed States on Venezuela has had an ad­verse ef­fect on T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor and econ­o­my.