An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Econ­o­mist Dr Ralph Hen­ry said T&T can on­ly hope that the US would con­tin­ue to ho­n­our its agree­ment that Venezuela can ex­port gas to Trinidad, de­spite Sun­day's con­tro­ver­sial gen­er­al elec­tions in the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

His com­ments fol­low the protests over the out­come of Venezuela’s elec­tion which rocked the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic’s cap­i­tal.  

Fol­low­ing the clo­sure of polls late on Sun­day, both Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and op­po­si­tion pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ed­mun­do González claimed vic­to­ry with 80 per cent of the votes tal­lied.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Hen­ry said, “The US may agree to con­tin­ue, and it de­pends on the price of gas. Sup­plies might be short, so they might be more in­dul­gent. But if the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion gets back in­to pow­er, I do not know if he will ho­n­our the agree­ment. Changes in gov­ern­ment some­times have pol­i­cy changes, but some­times you have con­ti­nu­ity. It’s up in the air now.”

Mean­while, for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said yes­ter­day there is al­ways a risk when do­ing busi­ness with a coun­try that faces high geopo­lit­i­cal risk such as Venezuela,

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said with the re­ac­tion to the Venezuela elec­tion re­sults there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty for fur­ther US sanc­tions that could im­pact the cru­cial en­er­gy deals with this coun­try.

“When­ev­er there are elec­tions, this is the con­cern and risk we must face. But this un­cer­tain­ty could have al­so hap­pened if the Op­po­si­tion had won but for a dif­fer­ent rea­son as they may have want­ed to re­think the Drag­on Gas deal. So yes, I would say it would im­pact the Drag­on Gas deal if sanc­tions were im­posed and even on the re­cent­ly signed 20-year agree­ment, which al­lows the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas from the Cocuina-Man­akin field,” she ex­plained.

She said she al­ways main­tained that it would have been bet­ter to de­vel­op gas fields in the deep­wa­ter of T&T.

“Now we know it is more cost­ly and cap­i­tal in­ten­sive and will re­quire a whole lot more in­cen­tives from the Gov­ern­ment, but if you bal­ance it, it would be more to our ben­e­fit, be­cause there is less risk in­volved in de­vel­op­ing gas fields in our deep wa­ter,” she out­lined.

Last Wednes­day, Venezuela grant­ed a 20-year li­cense to whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and British en­er­gy pro­duc­er BP to de­vel­op the Cocuina gas field, which strad­dles the mar­itime bor­der be­tween T&T and Venezuela.