Shell Plc is prepar­ing to re­sume pre­lim­i­nary work on a Venezue­lan off­shore gas field to sup­ply neigh­bor­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, as its con­fi­dence grows that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion will is­sue a new li­cence ex­empt­ing the project from sanc­tions, Bloomberg re­port­ed yes­ter­day, quot­ing peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter.

The project to de­vel­op the Drag­on gas field, lo­cat­ed in shal­low wa­ters be­tween the two coun­tries, would re­plen­ish feed­stock for Trinidad’s gas-starved liq­ue­fac­tion com­plex and petro­chem­i­cal plants. Trinidad is a sig­nif­i­cant ex­porter of LNG, am­mo­nia and oth­er nat­ur­al gas-based prod­ucts.

The im­mi­nent li­cence for Shell lays bare the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s split-screen ap­proach to­ward Venezuela. On one side, US war­ships ar­rayed off Venezuela’s coast and US mil­i­tary jets bomb­ing al­leged drug-run­ning boats. On the oth­er, oil com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives and Trinida­di­an of­fi­cials shut­tling be­tween Wash­ing­ton, Cara­cas and Port-of-Spain to try to get gas plans back on track.

The White House re­voked oil and gas li­cens­es in Venezuela in April to try to es­ca­late pres­sure on Venezuela, which the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion views as a haven for drug car­tels. Drag­on is one of sev­er­al off­shore nat­ur­al gas projects that Venezuela and Trinidad were work­ing to de­vel­op be­fore the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion re­versed course.

In Ju­ly, the ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued a re­strict­ed li­cence to Chevron Cor­po­ra­tion to re­sume pro­duc­tion and ex­ports of Venezue­lan heavy oil, and is ex­pect­ed to fol­low suit with Shell and oth­er com­pa­nies tied to gas projects that would ben­e­fit Trinidad, ac­cord­ing to Bloomberg’s sources.

Fol­low­ing a Sep­tem­ber 30 meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, US Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, out­lined US sup­port for the Drag­on gas pro­pos­al and steps to en­sure it will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime.

The Trea­sury De­part­ment, which ad­min­is­ters li­cens­es through the Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol, didn’t re­ply to a Bllomberg re­quest for com­ment.

The fi­nal terms of Shell’s li­cense are still un­der dis­cus­sion, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the sta­tus of the talks. Shell wants the new li­cense to have a du­ra­tion of up to 10 years com­pared with the orig­i­nal short-term li­cence to fa­cil­i­tate long-term in­vest­ment, ac­cord­ing to the peo­ple.

Shell’s part­ner in the project is T&T’s state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.

In par­al­lel to the Shell talks, BP Plc is seek­ing to re­store its own li­cence to de­vel­op the Venezue­lan side of the Man­akin-Cocuina gas field that strad­dles the mar­itime bor­der be­tween the two coun­tries.

Shell and BP are the main share­hold­ers in the At­lantic liq­ue­fac­tion com­plex in Trinidad, where nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has been de­clin­ing for more than a decade. The gas short­age has dent­ed Trinidad’s ex­ports of LNG and petro­chem­i­cals, in­clud­ing am­mo­nia that’s used by US farm­ers.

The Drag­on field lies on­ly a few miles from Shell’s Hi­bis­cus plat­form off Trinidad’s north-west coast.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is seen as will­ing to al­low oil com­pa­nies to re­sume work in Venezuela if they don’t pay tax­es and roy­al­ties to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment in hard cur­ren­cy, the peo­ple said.

In De­cem­ber 2023, Venezuela’s oil min­istry grant­ed Shell and NGC a 30-year pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tract for Drag­on, which holds more than 4 tril­lion cu­bic feet of re­serves. The com­pa­nies had ham­mered out ini­tial terms in 2018 be­fore the first Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion im­posed oil sanc­tions on Cara­cas in Jan­u­ary 2019 in an ef­fort to dis­lodge Nicolás Maduro, who has ruled the coun­try since 2013.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for a com­ment.