Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley met with of­fi­cials with­in the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton DC on Mon­day to dis­cuss T&T’s en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and the po­ten­tial ef­fects of same on Cari­com and the wider Amer­i­c­as.

In a re­lease from the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day, it was con­firmed that Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley met with Spe­cial Pres­i­den­tial Ad­vis­er for the Amer­i­c­as, for­mer US Sen­a­tor, Chris Dodd at the White House, Eisen­how­er Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fice Build­ing, Wash­ing­ton, DC.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young was al­so a part of the meet­ing which al­so fea­tured Amos Hochstein, State De­part­ment Se­nior Ad­vis­er for En­er­gy Se­cu­ri­ty, Juan Gon­za­lez, spe­cial as­sis­tant to the Pres­i­dent and NSC Se­nior Di­rec­tor for the West­ern Hemi­sphere and Er­ic Ja­cob­son, Of­fice of Vice Pres­i­dent were al­so present at the meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the par­ties agreed to con­tin­ue work­ing to­geth­er to se­cure en­er­gy sta­bil­i­ty for the re­gion.

On Jan­u­ary 24, the US Trea­sury De­part­ment grant­ed a li­cence to T&T to de­vel­op the Drag­on nat­ur­al gas field, which is lo­cat­ed in Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters. It is es­ti­mat­ed that the Drag­on field has re­serves of 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet (TCF).

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain on the day of the an­nounce­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter said: “The US Gov­ern­ment has to­day ap­proved T&T’s de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on field via an OFAC Waiv­er from sanc­tions with spe­cif­ic terms to be fi­nalised.

“What this means is that the re­stric­tions on the Drag­on gas field de­vel­op­ment is now re­lieved and all rel­e­vant par­ties can progress the plans to re­sult in nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela even­tu­al­ly flow­ing from these proven re­serves to T&T then on­to Caribbean, Eu­ro­pean and oth­er mar­kets, bring­ing much hu­man­i­tar­i­an ben­e­fits to the Venezue­lan pop­u­la­tion and greater en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty to the Caribbean re­gion.”

At the news con­fer­ence, Row­ley ex­pand­ed on the con­nec­tion be­tween the ex­ploita­tion of the nat­ur­al gas in the Drag­on field and re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

“En­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty for the re­gion at this time re­lates not on­ly to our coun­try but is of keen in­ter­est to Ja­maica, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic who cur­rent­ly use LNG but al­so oth­er ter­ri­to­ries like Bar­ba­dos and Grena­da where ex­plo­ration is un­der­way and Guyana and Suri­name where gas re­serves have been dis­cov­ered. T&T’s ac­cess to nat­ur­al gas and the use of LNG and petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try in Trinidad will ben­e­fit Cari­com and Car­i­fo­rum na­tions,” Dr Row­ley said.

The li­cence was is­sued fol­low­ing in­tense lob­by­ing by Young and is in­tend­ed to en­hance Caribbean re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty

“This de­ci­sion is the re­sult of ex­ten­sive diplo­ma­cy be­tween Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris and Caribbean lead­ers, who have made it clear that grant­i­ng this spe­cif­ic li­cense would help en­sure their en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and de­crease the re­gion’s re­liance on en­er­gy re­sources from oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing Rus­sia,” an of­fi­cial of the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion told the Reuters news agency in Jan­u­ary.

Re­fer­ring to a call that US vice pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris made to Row­ley on the day of the an­nounce­ment, the US ad­min­is­tra­tion said, “The vice pres­i­dent con­veyed to the Prime Min­is­ter that the Trea­sury De­part­ment would take ac­tion to help meet the re­gion’s long-term en­er­gy needs.”

Young has made two vis­its to Cara­cas since the grant­i­ng of the li­cence.