Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In the face of the US reim­pos­ing sanc­tions on Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor this week, the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) re­mains stead­fast in its in­ter­est in, and po­ten­tial sup­port for, the Drag­on Gas pipeline be­tween Venezuela and T&T.

While EU am­bas­sador to T&T, Pe­ter Cavendish, sig­nalled the group’s “will­ing­ness” to sup­port the project , Hun­gary’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and Trade, Péter Sz­i­jjártó, said his coun­try is will­ing to see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 90-kilo­me­tre pipeline be­tween both coun­tries when Hun­gary as­sumes the pres­i­den­cy of the EU in Ju­ly.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Cavendish said, “The Eu­ro­pean Union is, of course, very in­ter­est­ed in di­ver­si­fy­ing its sources of en­er­gy, and in this con­text, the pos­si­ble sup­port to the ex­ploita­tion of the Venezue­lan gas field is of great in­ter­est. The Eu­ro­pean Union does not have a fi­nal po­si­tion on any sup­port; how­ev­er, we are will­ing to look pos­i­tive­ly at any pro­pos­als that are brought to its at­ten­tion.”

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness on Wednes­day, dur­ing a brief vis­it to T&T, Sz­i­jjártó said the EU has made im­por­tant de­ci­sions to in­clude two of T&T’s ma­jor projects in­to its Glob­al Gate­way pro­gramme. The first is the 90 kilo­me­tre-long sub­ma­rine pipeline and the sec­ond is to make T&T’s petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try green­er and more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly pro­tect­ed. While the lat­ter is men­tioned on the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion’s Glob­al Gate­way Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean web­site, the pipeline project is ab­sent.

“The im­ple­men­ta­tion of these two agree­ments will be start­ed through­out our pres­i­den­cy term and we are com­mit­ted to sup­port you in the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of these two projects and to make sure the Eu­ro­pean sup­port will be there for the en­tire length of these projects,” Sz­i­jjártó said.

The ro­tat­ing EU pres­i­den­cy will fall to Hun­gary next. The na­tion will be at the helm of the Eu­ro­pean body from Ju­ly 1 through to the end of the year.

Last De­cem­ber, T&T signed an agree­ment with Venezuela al­low­ing Shell and whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) to de­vel­op and pro­duce nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on field.

Can US sanc­tions stall Drag­on deal?

As Sz­i­jjártó spoke to Sun­day Busi­ness last Wednes­day, in Wash­ing­ton DC the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion was reim­pos­ing oil sanc­tions on Venezuela over con­cerns about gen­er­al elec­tions there. The US gov­ern­ment said it would not re­new a li­cence that was set to ex­pire ear­ly on Thurs­day that had broad­ly eased Venezuela oil sanc­tions. It came as a re­sponse to Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s al­leged fail­ure to meet elec­tion com­mit­ments.

That same af­ter­noon, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries is­sued a state­ment say­ing the sanc­tions would not af­fect the ex­emp­tion grant­ed by the US gov­ern­ment to this coun­try pur­sue the Drag­on deal. The state­ment read, “…this amend­ment to the OFAC Gen­er­al Li­cence 44 does not af­fect the Spe­cif­ic Amend­ed OFAC li­cence that was is­sued to the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go on Oc­to­ber 17, 2023.”

The li­cence is­sued by Venezuela to T&T is valid un­til Oc­to­ber 31, 2025. A day lat­er, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley told the me­dia, “If the Unit­ed States does things to Venezuela or about Venezuela, we can’t guar­an­tee that some of those things would not be detri­men­tal to us, as in fact, it has al­ready been.”

With the EU set to sup­port the pipeline be­tween Venezuela and T&T, Sz­i­jjártó was asked if the lat­est US sanc­tions could de­rail the plan.

“We are against the ap­proach of sanc­tions be­cause we can­not re­call one sin­gle sanc­tion regime which would have been suc­cess­ful. We can­not re­call any sin­gle sanc­tion regime which would have hit - tar­get­ed - the lead­er­ship of that giv­en coun­try but we know many sanc­tion regimes, which have, at the end of the day, harmed the peo­ple of that giv­en coun­try,” Sz­i­jjártó said.

Pressed fur­ther on whether the US sanc­tions on Venezue­lan oil are work­ing, the For­eign Min­is­ter went fur­ther in adding, “If there were no sanc­tions on the en­er­gy field, at least, new vol­umes of gas could be added to the glob­al scene and al­so more gas could be added to the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket. If I un­der­stand it cor­rect­ly, you as Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came a col­lat­er­al dam­age of the sanc­tions im­posed by the Unit­ed States on Venezuela be­cause those sanc­tions have made it im­pos­si­ble to work more close­ly with the Venezue­lans on en­er­gy mat­ters and help­ing Eu­rope to di­ver­si­fy.”

Can a Trump pres­i­den­cy im­pact Drag­on Gas?

With the US elec­tions loom­ing in No­vem­ber, a change of ad­min­is­tra­tion could have im­pact on T&T’s Drag­on Gas deal with Venezuela. Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Or­ban has been a long­time al­ly of for­mer US pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Sz­i­jjártó echoed that sup­port on nu­mer­ous in­ter­na­tion­al trips, in­clud­ing in his in­ter­view with this news­pa­per.

When asked what could T&T ex­pect if Trump wins the up­com­ing US elec­tions and Hun­gary is lead­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union, Sz­i­jjártó said, “I would say the fol­low­ing; with Pres­i­dent Trump, there is a big­ger chance for re­al­is­tic dis­cus­sions and for com­mon sense-based de­ci­sions than with the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. More than my feel­ing, that’s my ex­pe­ri­ence. That’s what the two track records have put for­ward.”

He said with Trump as pres­i­dent, he be­lieves “bet­ter cir­cum­stances will be cre­at­ed for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion in this re­gion giv­ing ben­e­fit to T&T. We will def­i­nite­ly be hap­py and sup­port­ive to that.”

En­er­gy op­por­tu­ni­ties across the At­lantic

The gov­ern­ment of Hun­gary has come un­der in­creas­ing crit­i­cism for its close re­la­tion­ship with Rus­sia. De­spite con­demn­ing Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine, Hun­gary con­tin­ues to buy bil­lions of dol­lars of Russ­ian oil and gas an­nu­al­ly. de­spite most oth­er West­ern na­tions’ cut­ting of eco­nom­ic ties with Rus­sia. Sz­i­jjártó has in­sist­ed the deals are to en­sure the en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty of his coun­try.

How­ev­er, he sees T&T play­ing a role in Eu­rope’s en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

“When it comes to T&T, you can eas­i­ly be­come a part of Eu­ro­pean Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion Strat­e­gy. When it comes to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, we don’t mean sub­sti­tut­ing or re­plac­ing or chang­ing the al­ready ex­ist­ing sources but to have new sources. T&T can eas­i­ly be the first gate, the first tran­sit point, in the en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Caribbean re­gion,” said Sz­i­jjártó.

He praised T&T’s “fan­tas­tic” fa­cil­i­ties such as the At­lantic LNG Port with its “€20 bil­lion” ca­pac­i­ty to be a great source for im­prov­ing the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts in Eu­rope.

“Since we have LNG fa­cil­i­ties on the Eu­ro­pean seashores as well, for us it would be easy to move the gas from this re­gion to our en­er­gy bases. The ques­tion is on­ly tech­ni­cal­ly if we are ready and what would be the price?” Sz­i­jjártó added. He says there is po­lit­i­cal open­ness and they are phys­i­cal­ly ready.

Trade op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond en­er­gy

Be­yond the oil and gas in­dus­try, Sz­i­jjártó says T&T’s unique food in­dus­try “is ab­solute­ly adored” by Hun­gar­i­ans. “I’m pret­ty sure that the food prod­ucts from this re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly the ones de­vel­oped in T&T, could hit big suc­cess on our mar­ket. I do be­lieve that food in­dus­try ex­ports from T&T to­wards Eu­rope, in­clud­ing Hun­gary, can be a big suc­cess and we def­i­nite­ly do en­cour­age it.” He point­ed to T&T’s co­coa in­dus­try as well as choco­late.

Sz­i­jjártó says his meet­ings with T&T’s For­eign Af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne cen­tred around mat­ters of se­cu­ri­ty and mi­gra­tion.

He hailed the T&T gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion of “pro-peace and pro-diplo­ma­cy” as be­ing very close to the po­si­tion of the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment. He’s the first Hun­gar­i­an For­eign Min­is­ter vis­it T&T and he said to­geth­er with Dr Browne, his trip has made “huge steps” to­wards mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing and work­ing to­wards op­er­a­tion schemes which can im­prove the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both coun­tries.