Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez has ex­tend­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to Bar­ba­dos to ex­plore in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in Venezuela’s oil and gas in­dus­try, as both coun­tries sig­nal a re­newed push to deep­en eco­nom­ic and en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion.

Ro­dríguez made the pro­pos­al dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day along­side Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, fol­low­ing high-lev­el talks in Bridgetown aimed at strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al ties.

“We have al­so in­vit­ed Bar­ba­dos to come and in­vest in oil fields, al­so in gas ex­plo­ration in Venezuela, to join... in­crease the pro­duc­tion of hy­dro­car­bons in Venezuela,” Ro­dríguez said.

The meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos comes ahead of a planned trip by a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go to Venezuela, an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, aimed at se­cur­ing oil and gas re­sources. Speak­ing at the press con­fer­ence, Ro­dríguez said such col­lab­o­ra­tion could help “guar­an­tee the sup­ply and the safe­ty for en­er­gy to the peo­ple of Bar­ba­dos in the fu­ture.”

The an­nounce­ment formed part of a broad­er pack­age of co­op­er­a­tion ini­tia­tives span­ning tourism, trade, re­new­able en­er­gy and cul­tur­al ex­change.

Ro­dríguez de­scribed April 27 as mark­ing “the birth of co­op­er­a­tion in econ­o­my and trade be­tween Venezuela and Bar­ba­dos,” while point­ing to plans to in­crease air con­nec­tiv­i­ty and ex­pand tourism links across the re­gion. En­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion fea­tured promi­nent­ly in the dis­cus­sions, with Ro­dríguez al­so propos­ing joint ef­forts in re­new­able en­er­gy, in­clud­ing the po­ten­tial man­u­fac­tur­ing of so­lar pan­els.

Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley wel­comed the pro­pos­als, em­pha­sis­ing Bar­ba­dos’ in­ter­est in lever­ag­ing Venezuela’s scale and re­sources to strength­en its own en­er­gy re­silience.

“We are com­mit­ted to work­ing with oth­er part­ners to be able to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty which you have af­ford­ed us to have ac­tu­al pro­duc­tion in Venezuela,” Mot­t­ley said, not­ing that Bar­ba­dos’ en­er­gy com­pa­ny could col­lab­o­rate on joint in­vest­ments in the fields be­ing of­fered.

She un­der­scored that en­er­gy af­ford­abil­i­ty re­mains a press­ing glob­al con­cern and said Bar­ba­dos is seek­ing part­ner­ships that can help sta­bilise costs and en­sure re­li­able sup­ply.

Mot­t­ley al­so point­ed to Venezuela’s long­stand­ing role in sup­port­ing re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, ref­er­enc­ing past ini­tia­tives such as the San José Agree­ment and Petro­Caribe, which pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal as­sis­tance to Caribbean na­tions dur­ing pe­ri­ods of high oil prices.

The talks come amid a wider re­gion­al push to strength­en eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, with both coun­tries po­si­tion­ing their part­ner­ship as a mod­el for deep­er Caribbean-Latin Amer­i­can in­te­gra­tion.

Ro­dríguez ar­rived in Bar­ba­dos on Sun­day. Her re­gion­al out­reach fol­lows ear­li­er meet­ings with Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell

Gon­za­les: Ro­dríguez cau­tious with T&T dur­ing re­gion­al vis­its

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les is warn­ing that re­cent diplo­mat­ic moves by Ro­dríguez may re­flect strained po­lit­i­cal ties with Trinidad and To­ba­go, even as en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion with multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies con­tin­ues.

Two weeks ago, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the del­e­ga­tion would seek to se­cure Trinidad and To­ba­go’s “just share” of cross-bor­der oil and gas re­sources, sig­nalling re­newed ef­forts to ad­vance long-stalled en­er­gy projects. But ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, the tim­ing and pat­tern of Ro­dríguez’s vis­its sug­gest a more com­pli­cat­ed diplo­mat­ic re­al­i­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he ar­gued that Venezuela may be de­lib­er­ate­ly pri­ori­tis­ing en­gage­ment with oth­er Caribbean states while main­tain­ing a more cau­tious stance to­ward Port of Spain.

“Why would you want to go to Bar­ba­dos? How much busi­ness do you have there? You’re al­ready deal­ing with Trinidad, yet you’re go­ing else­where,” Gon­za­les ques­tioned, de­scrib­ing the vis­its as “rather fun­ny” giv­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty to Venezuela.

He sug­gest­ed that past crit­i­cism of the Venezue­lan lead­er­ship by Trinidad and To­ba­go of­fi­cials may still be in­flu­enc­ing re­la­tions.

De­spite the ap­par­ent po­lit­i­cal fall­out, Gon­za­les stressed that Venezuela’s deal­ings with ma­jor en­er­gy firms, in­clud­ing Shell and BP, are like­ly to pro­ceed. He not­ed that Venezuela has a strong in­cen­tive to mon­e­tise its ex­cess gas re­serves and is al­ready en­gaged with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to move projects for­ward.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les raised con­cerns that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s state-owned in­ter­ests, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), may be side­lined in cur­rent arrange­ments. Gon­za­les al­so ques­tioned whether Venezuela is ready to re­ceive the diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion an­nounced by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, not­ing the ab­sence of any pub­lic re­sponse from Cara­cas.

“She says she’s send­ing a del­e­ga­tion. I haven’t heard the Venezue­lans say any­thing,” Gon­za­les point­ed out. “Are they will­ing to re­ceive this del­e­ga­tion?”

He sug­gest­ed that on­go­ing be­hind-the-scenes ten­sions may be de­lay­ing for­mal en­gage­ment at the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment lev­el.

Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as well as For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers on the up­com­ing trip to Cara­cas.