Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young con­tin­ued their high-lev­el meet­ings in the Unit­ed States late Wednes­day and yes­ter­day, dis­cussing mat­ters of en­er­gy, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and Cari­com de­vel­op­ment.

Browne met with House Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Con­gress­man Ha­keem Jef­fries in Wash­ing­ton DC among oth­ers, while Young met with the Deputy As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary, Bu­reau of En­er­gy Re­sources, Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs said Browne and Jef­fries met in the Capi­tol Build­ing to­geth­er with US Am­bas­sador to T&T Can­dace Bond, where they dis­cussed mat­ters of mu­tu­al in­ter­est for both coun­tries, in­clud­ing mi­gra­tion, vi­o­lent crime, ter­ror­ism and the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti, and ex­plored op­por­tu­ni­ties for co­op­er­a­tion that will fur­ther strength­en bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions at both the na­tion­al and re­gion­al lev­els.

The state­ment said Browne al­so ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to Jef­fries for his ad­vo­ca­cy and ad­vance­ment of the key in­ter­ests of T&T in his pre­vi­ous roles, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the whip of the in­flu­en­tial Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus, and ac­knowl­edged his decade of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of many mem­bers of the T&T di­as­po­ra as the US rep­re­sen­ta­tive for New York’s 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict.

Browne al­so met with Con­gress­woman Sta­cy Plas­kett, the US rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the US Vir­gin Is­lands (USVI).

They al­so dis­cussed mat­ters such as the spread of vi­o­lent crime in the Cari­com re­gion, the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti, and the on­go­ing chal­lenges of pre­serv­ing cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing re­la­tions.

His fi­nal meet­ing was with Con­gress­man Steven Hors­ford, the cur­rent and 28th Chair of the Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus, whose moth­er is from T&T. Browne al­so ex­pressed grat­i­tude for Hors­ford’s ad­vo­ca­cy on be­half of T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly for vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion and for pro­mot­ing the mu­tu­al ben­e­fits of the ma­ture and en­dur­ing shared in­ter­ests of T&T and the USA.

The state­ment said giv­en Hors­ford’s im­pres­sive lead­er­ship record in work­force de­vel­op­ment in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try in Neva­da, and T&T’s fo­cus on eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Browne high­light­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for and in­vit­ed the Con­gress­man to col­lab­o­rate to­ward achiev­ing sim­i­lar re­sults in strength­en­ing the T&T tourism brands.

Hors­ford ex­pressed in­ter­est in vis­it­ing T&T, pos­si­bly with a con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion in the near fu­ture.

Browne al­so met with more than 60 lead­ers and in­flu­encers in the T&T di­as­po­ra across the US at the em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton DC.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Young, who is in Hous­ton at­tend­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy con­fer­ence known as CER­AWeekm, post­ed on Face­book that he yes­ter­day met with Shell ex­ec­u­tives, in­clud­ing Ex­ec­u­tive Vice-Pres­i­dent for LNG Cedric Cre­mers, and Se­nior Vice-Pres­i­dent and Coun­try Chair for Shell T&T Eu­gene Okpere.

“I was al­so able to catch up with Mr Wael Sawan, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Shell Glob­al. We dis­cussed the growth and strength­en­ing of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Shell and the many achieve­ments that we have been able to ac­com­plish since Shell re-en­tered Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2016,” Young said.

He added that he al­so had a “pro­duc­tive meet­ing” with Deputy As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Bu­reau of En­er­gy Re­sources in the De­part­ment of State, An­na Sh­pits­berg.

“We dis­cussed en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and the po­ten­tial of sus­tain­able en­er­gy projects in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Cari­com” he said.

Young is ac­com­pa­nied in Hous­ton by act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries San­dra Fras­er and Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan.