An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The re­turn of Don­ald Trump as US pres­i­dent fol­low­ing the Amer­i­can elec­tions on No­vem­ber 5 can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact T&T’s nat­ur­al gas ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela.

So said chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Am­chamTT Ni­rad Tewarie, as he made the state­ment on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day.

“If Don­ald Trump were to win, it would put pres­sure on our re­la­tions with Venezuela and pos­si­bly our arrange­ments to try and ac­cess their gas. Whether those li­cences would be re­voked or not re­newed is left to be seen, but I think we must be cog­nizant of the fact that that is a very re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty, We will know very soon and have a few months to pre­pare,” he out­lined.

Tewarie al­so gave his take on if Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris were to win the US elec­tions and what this can pos­si­bly mean for T&T and Venezuela re­la­tions.

“If Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris is elect­ed, the like­li­hood of the con­tin­u­a­tion of the poli­cies to­ward Venezuela and our abil­i­ty to ac­cess the gas is high­er and, there­fore, that could be good for us. In terms of geopol­i­tics, it is re­al­ly hard to say. The big­ger threat would be what hap­pens in the Gulf of Paria and what hap­pens with oil ex­ports. There­fore, the im­pact on prices, pro­duc­tion, and sup­ply. On one hand that might push gas prices up, which is what we should be more con­cerned about. But it could al­so lead to in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures giv­en our high lev­els of im­ports,” he ex­plained.

Last De­cem­ber, the Drag­on gas agree­ment was signed by Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young.

The gas li­cence grant­ed by the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and signed last De­cem­ber will have a du­ra­tion of 30 years and will have the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing ex­tend­ed for a pe­ri­od agreed up­on by the par­ties.

Some 70 per cent of the gas pro­duced will be ex­port­ed to T&T for liq­ue­fac­tion at the At­lantic fa­cil­i­ty in Point Fortin. The re­main­ing 30 per cent will be des­tined for the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, ac­cord­ing to the terms of the li­cence.

In Ju­ly, Venezuela grant­ed NGC a li­cence for its role in the de­vel­op­ment of Cocuina. The grant­i­ng of the Cocuina E&P li­cence would en­able the joint de­vel­op­ment of the cross-bor­der Cocuina–Man­akin gas field, one of three cross-bor­der reser­voir fields that strad­dle the mar­itime (in­ter­na­tion­al) bor­der be­tween T&T and Venezuela. The oth­er two are the Lo­ran/Man­a­tee and Kapok/Do­ra­do fields.