T&T’s Min­istry of En­er­gy said yes­ter­day that the de­ci­sion by the US gov­ern­ment to reim­pose sanc­tions on Venezuela’s oil and gas sec­tor does not af­fect the spe­cial amend­ed li­cence that was is­sued to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T on Oc­to­ber 17, 2023.

That li­cence, which was is­sued by the Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) of the US De­part­ment of Trea­sury, au­tho­ris­es the T&T Gov­ern­ment, state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), Shell PLC and their af­fil­i­ates to con­duct busi­ness with the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and its state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, bet­ter known as PDVSA.

The state­ment by the Min­istry of En­er­gy came hours af­ter an an­nounce­ment from Wash­ing­ton DC that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion reim­posed en­er­gy sanc­tions on Venezuela.

The US gov­ern­ment’s ac­tion is be­ing seen as an at­tempt to pun­ish Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s at­tempts to con­sol­i­date his rule just six months af­ter the US eased re­stric­tions in a bid to sup­port now fad­ing hopes for a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic open­ing in the OPEC na­tion.

A se­nior US of­fi­cial, dis­cussing the de­ci­sion with re­porters, said any US com­pa­ny in­vest­ing in Venezuela would have 45 days to wind down op­er­a­tions to avoid adding un­cer­tain­ty to glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets. The of­fi­cial spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss US pol­i­cy de­lib­er­a­tions.

In Oc­to­ber, the US grant­ed Maduro’s gov­ern­ment re­lief from sanc­tions on its state-run oil, gas and min­ing sec­tors af­ter it agreed to work with mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion to hold a free and com­pet­i­tive pres­i­den­tial elec­tion this year.

While Maduro went on to sched­ule an elec­tion for Ju­ly and in­vite in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers to mon­i­tor vot­ing, his in­ner cir­cle has used the rul­ing par­ty’s to­tal con­trol over Venezuela’s in­sti­tu­tions to un­der­mine the agree­ment. Ac­tions in­clude block­ing his main ri­val, ex law­mak­er Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do, from reg­is­ter­ing her can­di­da­cy or that of a des­ig­nat­ed al­ter­na­tive. Nu­mer­ous gov­ern­ment crit­ics have al­so been jailed over the past six months, in­clud­ing sev­er­al of Macha­do’s aides.

Yes­ter­day’s ac­tions es­sen­tial­ly re­turn US pol­i­cy to what it was pri­or to the agree­ment ham­mered out in Bar­ba­dos, mak­ing it il­le­gal for US com­pa­nies to do busi­ness with state-run oil pro­duc­er Petróleos de Venezuela SA, bet­ter known as PDVSA, with­out a spe­cif­ic li­cense from the US Trea­sury De­part­ment.

In a news re­lease, the Min­istry of En­er­gy not­ed that the spe­cif­ic, amend­ed OFAC li­cence is­sued to T&T last Oc­to­ber is valid un­til Oc­to­ber 31, 2025, and it per­mits Shell, NGC and con­trac­tors to con­tin­ue the works be­ing un­der­tak­en to ex­plore, pro­duce and ex­port nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on gas field.

In the news re­lease, En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that T&T se­cured a 30-year ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence from Venezuela gov­ern­ment for the Drag­on gas field on De­cem­ber 21, 2023.

He said the work to ex­plore, pro­duce and ex­port the nat­ur­al gas from Drag­on to T&T is con­tin­u­ing. (with files from AP)