Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she held meet­ings with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau in Flori­da last week­end to dis­cuss fur­ther en­gage­ment in the re­gion - in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing “our neigh­bour next door, Venezuela.”

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added,” We al­so met with US Sec­re­tary of En­er­gy Chris Wright to dis­cuss en­er­gy sec­tor co-op­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing gas fields in­volv­ing Venezuela, as well as in­ter­est in re­fin­ery and tank farm in­fra­struc­ture.

“Our meet­ing with Sec­re­tary Wright pro­duced im­me­di­ate re­sults. With­in hours, en­er­gy gi­ant Chevron reached out ex­press­ing in­ter­est in do­ing busi­ness in T&T.

“We al­so held pro­duc­tive talks with US Sec­re­tary of Com­merce Howard Lut­nick re­gard­ing US-based com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in in­fra­struc­ture and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion projects in TT. And with US Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamieson Greer, we dis­cussed tar­iffs and their po­ten­tial im­pact on en­er­gy com­modi­ties.”

She said bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions were al­so held with sev­er­al Latin Amer­i­can pres­i­dents.

“We spoke with Paraguay’s lead­er­ship re­gard­ing T&T’s ap­pli­ca­tion for as­so­ciate mem­ber­ship in Mer­co­sur. We al­so held talks with lead­ers from Ar­genti­na, Chile, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and Pana­ma on trade and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion.”

The mem­bers of Mer­co­sur are Ar­genti­na, Brazil, Bo­livia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, which is cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed. As­so­ciate mem­bers are Chile, Colom­bia, Ecuador, Guyana, Panamá, Perú and Suri­name.