Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent and Min­is­ter of Pe­tro­le­um, Del­cy Ro­dríguez has re­port­ed that the ves­sel “Go Elec­tra” ar­rived in Venezuela to car­ry out ex­plo­ration of the un­der­wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture in the Drag­on field.

On her In­sta­gram page on Sat­ur­day, Ro­driguez in­di­cat­ed that these ef­forts will al­low “ac­cel­er­at­ing the pro­duc­tion con­di­tions of this im­por­tant project de­vel­oped joint­ly with the Re­pub­lic of T&T and the Shell com­pa­ny.

“Venezuela con­tin­ues to take firm steps to­wards mak­ing the most of all the po­ten­tial of its gas belt,” she added.

She al­so up­loaded a video of the ship in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

She ex­plained that the par­ties to the De­cem­ber 2023 Drag­on gas agree­ment be­tween Venezuela and T&T are com­bin­ing “the sov­er­eign use of Venezuela’s re­sources with for­eign in­vest­ment of a pro­duc­tive na­ture” to ad­vance this project.

Ro­dríguez con­sid­ered the gas agree­ment signed be­tween Venezuela and T&T in 2023 as an ex­tra­or­di­nary and his­toric step.

The agree­ment will serve to pro­mote joint projects in the gas hy­dro­car­bons sec­tor and was signed in the pres­ence of both coun­tries’ au­thor­i­ties, she said.

She point­ed out that Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro said that the agree­ment is to work on projects like the Drag­on field in Venezue­lan wa­ters, to start pro­duc­ing gas and to go out to­geth­er to sell it glob­al­ly.

Last week, on No­vem­ber 21, the Pres­i­dent of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Hec­tor Obre­gon said the com­pa­ny plans to ex­port nat­ur­al gas by 2027.

Like­wise, the Venezue­lan Deputy Min­is­ter of Gas, Luis González, ex­plained that ex­plo­ration and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion work is cur­rent­ly be­ing car­ried out on the re­serves of gaseous hy­dro­car­bons not as­so­ci­at­ed with oil.

The Venezue­lan vice pres­i­dent’s up­date on the Drag­on gas project comes days af­ter the out­go­ing US Sec­re­tary of State, An­tho­ny Blinken re­vealed that the US Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es Ed­mun­do González as the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent of Venezuela and not Maduro.

Ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia re­port, last Sat­ur­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the T&T Gov­ern­ment has been en­gag­ing both the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic and Re­pub­li­can par­ties in the Unit­ed States in its ef­forts to se­cure the T&T Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela.

Young was speak­ing at the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) an­nu­al Christ­mas din­ner and awards func­tion at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas.

He said, “We re­main very con­nect­ed with the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States to try and en­sure we se­cure the fu­ture of these projects. Our part­ner in that project, 70 per cent, is Shell, which is the largest LNG trad­er in the world.

—Raphael John-Lall