GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@gua­di­an.co.tt

En­er­gy ex­pert An­tho­ny Paul sug­gests that if diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela de­te­ri­o­rate, this can pose a long-term risk to the sta­bil­i­ty of the Man­a­tee cross-bor­der mar­itime field, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pro-US stance.

The field is lo­cat­ed in the East Coast Ma­rine Area (EC­MA) in T&T and is part of the cross-bor­der Lo­ran-Man­a­tee dis­cov­ery, shared by this coun­try and Venezuela.

‘The Lo­ran/Man­a­tee has been re­port­ed to hold around 10 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of nat­ur­al gas, with 7.3 tcf on Venezuela’s side and the re­main­ing 2.7 tcf on T&T’s side. Man­a­tee is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate more than 600 mil­lion cu­bic feet per day and start pro­duc­tion in 2027.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Paul ex­plained the im­me­di­ate out­come is noth­ing has changed be­cause the sanc­tions put on by the US Gov­ern­ment have not changed, not­ing that these are the ones that caused any de­lay of the Drag­on Gas op­er­a­tions.

‘The Man­a­tee has two sides. Trinidad-on­ly gas and uni­tised gas. Again, the US sanc­tions have stopped the uni­tised gas from com­ing so the Trinidad-on­ly gas will con­tin­ue to come. In oth­er words, there’s no short-term change in that sit­u­a­tion. Longer term, it de­pends on how the Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela re­la­tion­ship plays out over time and who knows how that will play out. So it’s hard to say,” Paul fur­ther ex­plained.

He re­it­er­at­ed that at the mo­ment, the im­me­di­ate im­pact is no dif­fer­ent on those spe­cif­ic projects.

Paul, how­ev­er, not­ed that over the decades the diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela have been “ex­treme­ly good.”

On whether these re­la­tions could change giv­en the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, Paul said this coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela is based on diplo­ma­cy, but if that diplo­mat­ic land­scape changes, then the re­la­tion­ship could change.

How­ev­er Paul said, “I don’t think Venezuela will break any agree­ments we have. We have a bound­ary treaty agree­ment for in­stance, that spells out ways that Trinidad fish­er­men can fish in Venezue­lan wa­ters. I don’t think that will change. So I don’t know that any­thing sig­nif­i­cant will change, ex­cept for the at­ti­tudes. And that at­ti­tude may have a longer term im­pact de­pend­ing on the pol­i­tics, both in T&T and Venezuela in the fu­ture.

“There is noth­ing we can say now to pre­dict the fu­ture oth­er than if the pol­i­tics changes then things might change. But I don’t think any­thing will change in the im­me­di­ate with oil and gas,” Paul added.

At the same time, he warned that if the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela de­te­ri­o­rates then that would im­pact the busi­ness.

“Be­cause the Venezue­lan in­dus­try is state-owned and con­trolled so it’s a large ex­tent. It de­pends on how the re­la­tion­ship plays over time.

“And the Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad could change the Gov­ern­ment in Venezuela could change in the next five years or four years. So who knows. And the gov­ern­ment in the US could change. Not that the US for­eign pol­i­cy tends to stay fair­ly sta­t­ic, de­pend­ing on who’s in pow­er,” Paul added.

Not­ing that the Caribbean has been deemed a zone of peace, Paul ad­vised that that sta­tus must be main­tained..

The Prime Min­is­ter has pub­licly sup­port­ed the de­ploy­ment of US mil­i­tary as­sets in the Caribbean to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing.

She stat­ed that her gov­ern­ment wel­comed US as­sis­tance to ad­dress the re­gion’s on­go­ing is­sues with crime and vi­o­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­sponse to threats from the Venezue­lan regime.

How­ev­er, her stance has drawn crit­i­cism, as many ar­gue that that uni­lat­er­al­ist pos­ture could iso­late T&T from its Cari­com part­ners.