An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing the Unit­ed States’ de­ci­sion Wednes­day to re­sume sanc­tions against Venezuela, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley clar­i­fied that as it stands, the Drag­on gas arrange­ment is un­af­fect­ed.

How­ev­er, he said that giv­en the geopo­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics in­volved, that could change. 

“The Unit­ed States does things to Venezuela or about Venezuela, we can’t guar­an­tee that some of these things will not be detri­men­tal to us. It has al­ready been, but we have some things in place which are not di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by that. But that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be af­fect­ed some­time in the fu­ture, as the goal­posts keep chang­ing,” Row­ley said at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day. 

He not­ed that the whole idea of get­ting Venezuela to ex­port gas to T&T is a pos­i­tive move. 

“If it does not hap­pen this year and it hap­pens ten years from now, then that is a good thing. We would love it to hap­pen soon­er. The whole idea of us hav­ing, out of that agree­ment, a 30-year arrange­ment is pos­i­tive. When it is go­ing to start there are some dif­fi­cul­ties there, but it might be in­flu­enced by the out­come of the US elec­tions be­cause they are all in­ter­twined. The pol­i­tics of Flori­da, the pol­i­tics of New York,” Row­ley ex­plained. 

In a re­lease on Wednes­day, the Min­istry of En­er­gy said 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. 

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 in Wash­ing­ton DC on Wednes­day, 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. 

CDB is­sue 

Asked if he agreed that the lead­er­ship of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) is an in­ter­nal mat­ter to the in­sti­tu­tion and that re­gion­al heads of gov­ern­ment should not be in­volved, the Prime Min­is­ter said he did not agree with that no­tion at all. 

Row­ley in­di­cat­ed that the CDB, as a re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion, should be looked at by the re­gion­al lead­ers. 

“When I was in Guyana, at the last heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing, a sig­nif­i­cant part of our dis­cus­sion had to do with the car­ry­ings-on at the CDB and if there is any­body that is in­di­cat­ing that the re­gion­al heads have no busi­ness in be­ing con­cern or be­ing moved, by what is hap­pen­ing with the CDB, then they are very wrong,” Row­ley said.

The CDB has re­mained mum on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the de­ci­sion to send the CDB pres­i­dent, Hy­gi­nus Leon, on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave in Jan­u­ary. Act­ing CDB pres­i­dent Isaac Solomon, con­firmed at a Bank news con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary that “there is an in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive process in­volv­ing the pres­i­dent. 

“The bank is ex­treme­ly fo­cused on pre­serv­ing the in­de­pen­dence, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, and in­tegri­ty of the process and as you can well ap­pre­ci­ate for us to main­tain the in­tegri­ty and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of the process, we are un­able to pro­vide any oth­er de­tails at this time,” Solomon said then. 

Mid-year re­view bud­get

When asked by Guardian me­dia about the date for the mid-year re­view bud­get, Row­ley said Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Colm Im­bert, has not in­di­cat­ed the date to him as yet, but he said it looks like it would be some­time in ear­ly May. 

The last mid-year bud­get was held on May 16, 2023.