An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

While the full de­tails of the meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and the Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Ja­maica yes­ter­day is not yet known for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, says un­cer­tain­ty still looms over this coun­try’s gas deals with Venezuela.

Both Young and Ru­bio said af­ter the meet­ing that it was ex­cel­lent. Young said he will pro­vide more de­tails at the the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence to­day.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ram­nar­ine said the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has made its po­si­tion clear about Venezuela's oil and gas in­dus­try.  

He not­ed that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has said the US will im­pose a 25 per cent tar­iff on coun­tries that pur­chase oil from Venezuela.

Ram­nar­ine stressed that since the re-elec­tion of Pres­i­dent Trump in No­vem­ber last year, the un­cer­tain­ty around Drag­on and Couci­na-Man­akin has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased.  

 “What we do know is Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio is very hawk­ish on Venezuela and the Re­pub­li­can par­ty has re­ceived heavy sup­port from the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in Flori­da. That Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in Flori­da wants to see their coun­try re­turn to democ­ra­cy,” he de­tailed.

The for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter ad­vised that the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties have to plan this coun­try’s econ­o­my for the sce­nario where we do not get Drag­on gas.  

“If it hap­pens, then great. If not, we have to re­ly on our re­source base, es­pe­cial­ly our deep­wa­ter gas re­serves which re­main un­de­vel­oped. If nei­ther Venezuela nor our own deep­wa­ter gas ma­te­ri­alise, we will con­tin­ue with the slow de­cline of our en­er­gy sec­tor with its re­lat­ed chal­lenges such as dwin­dling for­eign ex­change sup­plies,” said Ram­nar­ine.

Speak­ing on the Ca­lyp­so gas field project, he said it should have start­ed pro­duc­ing nat­ur­al gas two years ago.  

“To this day, that project has not achieved fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion and by the time we get to that, it's an­oth­er five years to first gas. This is one of the rea­sons why the coun­try finds it­self be­hind the eight ball,” he lament­ed.

Lo­cat­ed 220 kilo­me­tres off the east coast of Trinidad in 2,100 me­tres of wa­ter, the Ca­lyp­so field is es­ti­mat­ed to hold 90.6 bcm (3.2 tcf) of nat­ur­al gas. It is li­censed to Wood­side, with a 70 per cent par­tic­i­pat­ing in­ter­est, and part­ner BP, which holds 30 per cent.

Al­so shar­ing his views on the is­sue was econ­o­mist Mar­i­ano Browne who said the Ca­lyp­so field is sub­ject to dif­fer­ent com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions than those raised by Sen­a­tor Ru­bio.  

“The Ca­lyp­so field is not a large one. And it is rel­a­tive­ly deep­er wa­ters. This re­quires care­ful com­mer­cial ne­go­ti­a­tions by the gov­ern­ment to en­sure that they ob­tain re­al ben­e­fit from the ne­go­ti­a­tions,” Browne point­ed out.

On the talks be­tween the prime min­is­ter and Ru­bio, Browne said he has been known to be a Venezuela “hawk” mean­ing that he is un­friend­ly to Venezuela’s in­ter­ests.

 “Our in­ter­est is in get­ting a 25-year OFAC li­cence. There is noth­ing in the text that sug­gests that Sec­re­tary Ru­bio has a con­ces­sion of this na­ture in mind. We al­so need to be aware of the Lib­er­a­tion Day ex­am­ple April 2. That is the day on which Pres­i­dent Trump will an­nounce the new im­port tar­iff regime. This is of greater sig­nif­i­cance in the short run as it is like­ly to af­fect all of TT’s ex­ports to the US. The talk­ing points ahead of the meet­ing yes­ter­day did not ad­dress this area,” he added.