Raphael John-Lall

Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s choice of Mar­co Ru­bio to serve as Sec­re­tary of State of the Unit­ed States could spell trou­ble for the Drag­on gas deal and oth­er agree­ments with Venezuela.

T&T is no stranger to hard­lin­er Ru­bio who in 2019 warned the coun­try about its re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela and Cu­ba.

En­er­gy econ­o­mist Dr Fran­cis­co Monal­di, who is the di­rec­tor of the Latin Amer­i­ca En­er­gy Pro­gram at the Cen­ter for En­er­gy Stud­ies at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bak­er In­sti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy in the Unit­ed States, told Guardian Me­dia that Ru­bio is a war hawk who wants to see the so­cial­ist regime of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro top­pled.

“With­out a doubt, Mar­co Ru­bio rep­re­sents a more hawk­ish pol­i­cy to­wards Venezuela. He is, of course, a Cuban Amer­i­can who has in the past been very an­tag­o­nis­tic to­wards the Venezue­lan regime and has sug­gest­ed that max­i­mum sanc­tions should be im­posed. It is still un­clear if he will de­fine the pol­i­cy or Trump will do so. There are oth­er mem­bers in the ad­min­is­tra­tion like Tul­si Gab­bard, who is pro­posed to be the di­rec­tor of Na­tion­al In­tel­li­gence, who has the op­po­site po­si­tion about lev­el­ling sanc­tions against Venezuela.”

Monal­di is warn­ing that sanc­tions against Venezuela could be “hard­ened.”

“How­ev­er, the pre­pon­der­ance of the ev­i­dence is that be­ing the Sec­re­tary of State who is so con­cerned about Venezuela and Cu­ba, that could im­ply a tougher sanc­tions regime against Venezuela. Com­pared to a week ago, when we knew that Trump was the Pres­i­dent-elect, we can say that more like­ly than not that sanc­tions could be hard­ened. It is the case that the gas projects to T&T are in a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry from the oil projects but hav­ing said that, it is hard to pre­dict.”

He qual­i­fied his state­ments by say­ing that it is Trump who will make the fi­nal de­ci­sion and Trump’s man­date is to end wars and con­flicts glob­al­ly.

Last week, Trump nom­i­nat­ed Flori­da Sen­a­tor, Mar­co Ru­bio as the next US Sec­re­tary of State and the first His­pan­ic to hold this po­si­tion.

Ru­bio, 53, who is of Cuban her­itage, was born in Mi­a­mi and is a vo­cal crit­ic of Cu­ba and Venezuela and has re­peat­ed­ly called for a hard­line stance against the two so­cial­ist coun­tries.

On his X ac­count, Ru­bio has men­tioned T&T sev­er­al times over the years.

Ear­li­er this year, he con­grat­u­lat­ed T&T on its 62nd In­de­pen­dence Day but in 2019, he was more crit­i­cal of T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela and Cu­ba.

In Ju­ly 2019, Ru­bio on his X ac­count said: “The US has an ex­cel­lent and grow­ing re­la­tion­ship with #Trinidadand­To­ba­go. @TTMEEI help­ing #Cu­ba cir­cum­vent sanc­tions re­lat­ed to #Venezuela through ship­ment of LPG via a 3rd par­ty would be an un­nec­es­sary ir­ri­tant in our bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship.”

Then T&T En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan was quot­ed by a lo­cal news­pa­per as say­ing that T&T cher­ish­es its re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States and it will not help any coun­try that the Unit­ed States has sanc­tioned.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young for his po­si­tion on Ru­bio’s new role but he did not re­spond to the mes­sages or calls.

En­er­gy con­sul­tant and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine told Guardian Me­dia that the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has not built any mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ship with the Re­pub­lic Par­ty, which is back in pow­er, and this could have a neg­a­tive im­pact.

“I have nev­er seen any ev­i­dence that the cur­rent Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has built any ma­te­r­i­al re­la­tion­ship with per­sons in the Re­pub­li­can par­ty. They seem to have fo­cussed al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on build­ing re­la­tions with De­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty func­tionar­ies.”

He point­ed out that the last Trump-ap­point­ed am­bas­sador, Joseph Mon­del­lo, had a ma­jor dis­pute with the cur­rent Min­is­ter of En­er­gy over the Del­cy Ro­driguez vis­it and the Rio Treaty.

“More­over, Mar­co Ru­bio and Elon Musk, two of the most se­nior mem­bers of the in­com­ing Trump 2.0 ad­min­is­tra­tion, have ex­pressed strong views on Venezuela and its lead­er­ship. Ru­bio had tweet­ed in 2019 about what he saw as Trinidad’s com­plic­i­ty with Venezuela and sanc­tions eva­sion. They will have their opin­ion of T&T and its re­la­tions with Venezuela, and they will have their for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion on Venezuela. I can’t say what they will do or not do. There are many mov­ing parts that the US will con­sid­er such as il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion of Venezue­lans in­to the US and Venezuela’s claim on the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion of Guyana.”

Ram­nar­ine al­so said on­ly time will tell if the Of­fice of For­eign Af­fairs Con­trol’s (OFAC) li­cences will be ex­tend­ed. These li­cences have al­lowed the en­er­gy projects to be pos­si­ble.

“I can’t say what they will do when the two OFAC li­cens­es re­lat­ed to Drag­on and Couci­na-Man­akin ex­pire. That, how­ev­er, in­tro­duces an­oth­er lay­er of un­cer­tain­ty in­to the equa­tion and ramps up po­lit­i­cal risk. Shell and BP will not com­mit US hun­dreds of mil­lions of share­hold­er mon­ey to these two projects un­less the OFAC li­cense ‘sword of Damo­cles’ is re­moved. It shows that in pol­i­tics things change all the time and one day you are out and the next day you are in.”

A re­tired di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, is warn­ing that a max­i­mum pres­sure ap­proach can af­fect T&T en­er­gy agree­ments if pushed to the ex­treme. That would mean even US en­er­gy in­ter­ests could al­so be af­fect­ed.

“Chrevron for in­stance will have to be sanc­tioned and gen­er­al­ly US (and Eu­ro­pean) com­pa­nies will lose ac­cess to Venezue­lan oil. I am not sure if Trump is pre­pared to go that far. But it is pos­si­ble he may be­lieve he can over­throw the regime in Venezuela, some­thing which he tried with­out suc­cess in his first term. I would think that it is even more dif­fi­cult to­day to change this regime giv­en the fact, that there are more left-wing gov­ern­ments in Latin Amer­i­ca which are against ex­ter­nal in­ter­ven­tion as well as the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of the mil­i­tary in Venezuela.”

Venezue­lan opin­ions

While the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in T&T de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter, last week Venezuela’s dai­ly news­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias quot­ed Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, the First Vice Pres­i­dent of Venezuela’s rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty as say­ing that Ru­bio is hard­lin­er and Ca­bel­lo be­lieves that he will be one of the first of­fi­cials who will clash with Trump and will be fired.

Promi­nent Venezue­lan econ­o­mist Luis Vi­cente Leon on his X ac­count analysed Trump’s vic­to­ry and how it could im­pact on Venezuela’s en­er­gy in­dus­try.

Leon paint­ed sev­er­al sce­nar­ios but does not be­lieve Trump’s Gov­ern­ment, even with war hawks like Ru­bio, will tight­en sanc­tions.

Leon be­lieves that Trump will in­stead fo­cus on im­mi­gra­tion is­sue and de­port­ing il­le­gal Venezue­lan mi­grants back to Venezuela.