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Raphael John-Lall

Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, An­tho­ny Bryan is en­cour­ag­ing T&T, Guyana and Suri­name to move quick­ly in de­vel­op­ing a re­gion­al bloc that would be in­de­pen­dent in en­er­gy mat­ters.

Bryan spoke at a pan­el dis­cus­sion co-host­ed by the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (IIR) on re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion ti­tled “Chang­ing Geopo­lit­i­cal Land­scape Glob­al­ly and in the Hemi­sphere: Im­pli­ca­tions for Caribbean Re­gion­al In­te­gra­tion” on March 21 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

Last Thurs­day, he elab­o­rat­ed on his orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion at the pan­el dis­cus­sion, in a state­ment he shared with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian giv­ing more de­tails on the top­ic of re­gion­al en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion.

He point­ed out that the idea of re­gion­al en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion has been around for a while, but it has gained mo­men­tum, prompt­ed by ma­jor new dis­cov­er­ies of oil and nat­ur­al gas in Guyana and Suri­name.

“En­er­gy in­te­gra­tion would con­sist of the three coun­tries of the South­ern Caribbean En­er­gy Ma­trix: T&T, Guyana, and Suri­name. But progress has been slow to­ward the al­liance. T&T’s oil sec­tor is in se­ri­ous de­cline and its most im­por­tant eco­nom­ic sec­tor, nat­ur­al gas, is al­so de­clin­ing. George­town may be set­ting the pace to­ward the de­sired in­te­gra­tion rather than Port-of-Spain,” Bryan said

He said Suri­name has long had a small on­shore oil in­dus­try, man­aged by its state-owned Staat­solie and the coun­try is the late­com­er of the group, on­ly find­ing large-scale com­mer­cial quan­ti­ties of off­shore oil in late 2019 and ear­ly 2020.

“En­er­gy of­fi­cials in these three South­ern Caribbean coun­tries recog­nise that re­gion­al en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion is im­por­tant, con­sid­er­ing the over­lap of re­sources, in­fra­struc­ture, and hu­man cap­i­tal. For ex­am­ple, the state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) is al­ready ac­tive in Guyana and Suri­name. In June 2024, NGC and Staat­solie signed new agree­ment to en­hance re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion (in­clud­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Suri­namese gas be­ing piped to Trinidad to be re­fined in­to Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) and up­dat­ing a Ju­ly 2023 Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the coun­tries. And in Oc­to­ber 2024, high-lev­el dis­cus­sions were held in George­town be­tween Suri­name and Guyana to put more con­crete mea­sures in place for joint de­vel­op­ment of off­shore gas fields.”

He raised the ques­tion of how quick­ly eco­nom­ic and en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion could ad­vance.

“With the ad­vent of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the USA, Guyana, Suri­name and T&T must recog­nise a changed geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape. Coun­tries with trade sur­plus­es with the US are at risk of high­er tar­iffs and du­ties on prod­ucts shipped. Guyana and T&T fall in­to that cat­e­go­ry.”

He added that US pol­i­cy could al­so com­pli­cate re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, re­fer­rig to the con­tro­ver­sial Drag­on gas agree­ment.

“The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion re­cent­ly can­celled Chevron’s waivers for con­duct­ing busi­ness in Venezuela. Will it do the same with the Trinidad-Venezuela joint ven­ture in the Drag­on field? As Trinidad’s for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley stat­ed on March 12, 2025: ‘If you see us los­ing that the US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) Li­cence, as you will see in the news if that hap­pens, they you know that ‘coo coo’ is cooked. If you see the Venezue­lans not al­low­ing us to use the Drag­on Field, then you know that we are in dif­fi­cul­ty.’”

In sum­ma­ry, Bryan said there is con­sid­er­able room to deep­en en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion among Guyana, Suri­name and T&T, a de­vel­op­ment that can grad­u­al­ly fall in­to place.

“The ar­chi­tec­ture of that in­te­gra­tion has yet to be ful­ly de­signed, con­sid­er­ing the pri­or­i­ties in each coun­try. All three coun­tries have elec­tions this year, which could re­sult in changes of gov­ern­ment and lead­er­ship. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so in­jects a de­gree of un­cer­tain­ty, in­to even the friend­liest of re­la­tion­ships. Con­sid­er­ing the new glob­al dis­pen­sa­tions, the South­ern Caribbean En­er­gy Ma­trix will find more strength in an in­te­grat­ed eco­nom­ic bloc than forg­ing ahead sep­a­rate­ly.”

Hands-on ad­vice

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter and a for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor, Win­ston Dook­er­an is urg­ing T&T and the rest of the Caribbean re­gion to work to­geth­er to con­front the grow­ing eco­nom­ic crises that the re­gion and world are now fac­ing.

Dook­er­an, who al­so spoke at the pan­el dis­cus­sion at UWI, ar­gued that T&T’s and the Caribbean’s old fash­ioned, bu­reau­crat­ic method of do­ing busi­ness is now ir­rel­e­vant in the mod­ern world and they need to make re­al-time de­ci­sions con­cern­ing trade and busi­ness.

He too spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, elab­o­rat­ing on what he orig­i­nal­ly said dur­ing the pan­el dis­cus­sion.

“At the last Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com meet­ing that took place about a month or so ago, they took a de­ci­sion that they would com­mis­sion a re­port on trade be­tween the Caribbean re­gion and the Unit­ed States. They were adopt­ing an ap­proach of study­ing a mat­ter that re­quires a hands-on de­ci­sion. My view is that they could do that but they re­al­ly need to set up an on­go­ing hands-on com­mit­tee ad­vis­ing the Heads of Gov­ern­ment on trade mat­ters be­tween Caribbean re­gion and the Unit­ed States. They should be ad­vised on a dai­ly ba­sis as these de­vel­op­ments are mov­ing quick­ly. It can­not be that that they are do­ing a study now and then three months to re­port. That is a method­ol­o­gy that can­not be ap­plied in these un­pre­dictable times. As in three months time, there will be even more is­sues to be solved.”

He gave the opin­ion that the re­cent slew of tar­iffs that the US Gov­ern­ment has lev­elled against T&T and the rest of the world will have neg­a­tive ef­fects.

Last Wednes­day, the US Pres­i­dent re­vealed that T&T was among the coun­tries that would face rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iffs to be im­ple­ment­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

Im­ports from T&T will be sub­ject to a base­line tar­iff rate of 10 per­cent in­to the Unit­ed States.

“There will be a neg­a­tive fall­out in T&T and the Caribbean from these tar­iffs. There will be the is­sue of ris­ing prices which could af­fect us neg­a­tive­ly. These ris­ing prices would be in re­gard to tar­iffs im­pos­ing new costs for goods in the Unit­ed States, but that will rip­ple down to the mar­ket. That rip­ple ef­fect would come in­to the eco­nom­ic ge­og­ra­phy of the Caribbean. There are al­so the bor­row­ing costs that will in­crease and the move­ment of funds will be­come more ex­pen­sive.”

He al­so gave the view that US Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio’s trip to the Caribbean two weeks ago was pos­i­tive but added that gas agree­ments like the Drag­on gas agree­ment with Venezuela can­not be as­sured giv­en the “un­pre­dictable” na­ture of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The Caribbean lead­ers should be com­mend­ed for get­ting such an ear­ly vis­it by the US Se­cre­tray of State to the Caribbean. On the is­sue of the Drag­on gas agree­ment, Ru­bio was able to read what is the in­ter­est of T&T. He said that he would not harm T&T, but he did not make any firm com­mit­ments. Ba­si­cal­ly, say­ing the agree­ment stands un­til Oc­to­ber. Giv­en the na­ture on how for­eign pol­i­cy is­sues are now de­ter­mined by the Unit­ed States which is one of un­pre­dictabil­i­ty, you can nev­er re­ly on any firm de­ci­sion un­til it hap­pens.”

When Ru­bio was in the Caribbean two weeks ago, he crit­i­cised the in­flu­ence of coun­tries like Venezuela and Chi­na. Dook­er­an be­lieves that T&T and the Caribbean re­gion must look out for its own in­ter­ests and have re­la­tion­ships with coun­tries that bring val­ue to the re­gion.

“I think we should have a mul­ti­lat­er­al for­eign pol­i­cy de­fined from our own in­ter­ests and that means we should deal with Chi­na and we should deal with the Unit­ed States, we should deal with Eu­rope, we should deal with the glob­al south. Not a ‘non-aligned’ pol­i­cy so I pre­fer to use the term ‘mul­ti-aligned’ pol­i­cy. We are in­volved in putting the Caribbean first as much as the Unit­ed States is putting the Unit­ed States first. We should not be afraid to tell the Unit­ed States or any­body else that. How­ev­er, we can­not sim­ply talk, we must be strate­gic about it.”