The en­er­gy cham­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela have signed a Let­ter of In­tent to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion and pro­mote clos­er in­te­gra­tion be­tween the two coun­tries’ hy­dro­car­bon sec­tors.

Ál­varo Pérez Díaz, pres­i­dent of the Venezue­lan Pe­tro­le­um Cham­ber (CPV), and Dr Priya Mara­jh, pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, signed the agree­ment at the Venezuela In­ter­na­tion­al Oil & Gas Sum­mit in Cara­cas on Sep­tem­ber 29.

In a news re­lease sent yes­ter­day, the En­er­gy Cham­ber out­lined plans for the two or­gan­i­sa­tions to ex­change tech­ni­cal knowl­edge, pro­vide mu­tu­al sup­port and strength­en com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels be­tween their re­spec­tive in­dus­tries.

The agree­ment pro­vides a frame­work for joint in­dus­try events, tech­ni­cal work­shops and tar­get­ed in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing pro­grammes.

The ini­tia­tive re­flects a shared in­ter­est in sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the oil and gas in­dus­tries in both coun­tries, with the cham­bers seek­ing to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween in­dus­try as­so­ci­a­tions and pri­vate-sec­tor com­pa­nies.

For the CPV, the part­ner­ship sup­ports its man­date to rep­re­sent Venezuela’s hy­dro­car­bon goods and ser­vices sec­tor. The or­gan­i­sa­tion ex­pects the arrange­ment to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion among in­dus­try as­so­ci­a­tions, sup­port mem­ber com­pa­nies and gen­er­ate new busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in Venezuela’s oil in­dus­try.

Mara­jh de­scribed the agree­ment as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the pri­vate sec­tors of both coun­tries to work to­geth­er for mu­tu­al ben­e­fit.

“We are pleased to sign this Let­ter of In­tent with La Cá­mara Petrol­era de Venezuela. We see this as a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the pri­vate sec­tors in both coun­tries to col­lab­o­rate for mu­tu­al ben­e­fit, as we con­tin­ue work­ing to­geth­er to de­vel­op a strong, sus­tain­able, and ro­bust re­gion­al en­er­gy sec­tor,” she said.

The agree­ment es­tab­lish­es a ba­sis for con­tin­ued en­gage­ment be­tween the two cham­bers as Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela seek to strength­en re­gion­al en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion.

Planned ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude tech­ni­cal ex­changes and in­dus­try pro­grammes to fa­cil­i­tate the shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion and ex­per­tise across the hy­dro­car­bon sec­tors.

The Let­ter of In­tent sig­nals the two in­dus­try bod­ies' ef­fort to build stronger in­sti­tu­tion­al links and en­cour­age greater pri­vate-sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­gion­al en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.