PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For now, the Drag­on Gas deal is not dead. In fact, Gov­ern­ment is still mov­ing at full speed to ful­fil the en­er­gy arrange­ment with Venezuela.

This was con­firmed by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, a day af­ter he met with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio for bi­lat­er­al talks on en­er­gy, se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er is­sues in Ja­maica on Wednes­day.

While the ini­tial com­mu­nique re­leased by the US gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing the meet­ing did not in­clude the is­sue of talks about the cross-bor­der gas field deals T&T has in place with Venezuela, Prime Min­is­ter Young yes­ter­day said he did broach the top­ic with Sec­re­tary Ru­bio.

“I then took the dis­cus­sions to the Drag­on gas deal, to our re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela and em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of it. Not on­ly to Trinidad and To­ba­go, but I was able to set out how it would al­so af­fect the rest of the Cari­com re­gion, be­cause of the im­por­tant role we play in sup­port­ing some of our Cari­com broth­er and sis­ter na­tions through­out the re­gion,” Young said.

“This is the ben­e­fit of a re­spect­ful re­la­tion­ship, this is the ben­e­fit of what we’ve built up over the past few years with the de­ci­sion mak­ers in the Unit­ed States and when my pre­de­ces­sor and my­self have spo­ken to you and told you we speak to per­sons on both sides of the aisle, we re­mained en­gaged with who­ev­er is a gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed States.”

How­ev­er, he said the oth­er half of the gas field in Trinidad wa­ters, Man­a­tee, would still be in play should the Drag­on deal be im­pact­ed by US pol­i­cy.

“Drag­on re­al­ly is the field that is go­ing to be af­fect­ed by it, we have Man­a­tee. Man­a­tee is go­ing to flow by 2027, that’s tak­ing place. Again, it gives me an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­peat the achieve­ment that was in al­low­ing us, with a uni­tised field, to pur­sue 2.7 TCF of gas on our side that is pro­ceed­ing full speed ahead,” he said.

He point­ed out that Shell is con­tin­u­ing work in re­la­tion to the project in Mex­i­co and work is al­so be­ing done here on the con­struc­tion of the plat­form for the Drag­on field at La Brea.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing the deal will con­tin­ue to be held with the US gov­ern­ment.

The deal is cur­rent­ly mov­ing for­ward at the be­hest of the US gov­ern­ment as a re­sult of the OFAC li­cence grant­ed in Oc­to­ber 2023. How­ev­er, Young point­ed out that Ru­bio said the US pol­i­cy was not meant to harm Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“He ex­plained to me the US pol­i­cy that they’re ap­ply­ing. I un­der­stood the US pol­i­cy and ba­si­cal­ly, we agreed that there is a lot of room in there for Trinidad and To­ba­go to achieve what is need­ed do­mes­ti­cal­ly with the Drag­on gas deal, as well as the role that we play through­out the re­gion, that they will give us sup­port on and the achieve­ment of the pol­i­cy. I made it very clear that Venezuela is our clos­est neigh­bour, we have a re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela that can be a ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship again for the re­gion and the West­ern Hemi­sphere,” Young said.

But Young ad­mit­ted he could not say if the two-year li­cence for the Drag­on gas field would be re­newed.

“That is part of what the con­ver­sa­tion was about yes­ter­day, as was dis­cussed be­tween Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio and my­self. Our OFAC li­cence is in place un­til Oc­to­ber, he (Ru­bio) recog­nised that the land­scape is chang­ing, for ex­am­ple, the in­tro­duc­tion of tar­iffs or the sug­ges­tion of in­tro­duc­tion of tar­iffs, so the op­por­tu­ni­ty that I got on be­half of Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day, to sit down with the per­son who is in charge of de­cid­ing and there is a lot of dis­cre­tion in there,” said Young.

He al­so point­ed to the fact that Chevron had seen its dead­line from the US gov­ern­ment to con­clude its op­er­a­tions with Venezuela’s state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) moved from April 3 to May 27 as a sign that some lee­way could be grant­ed in T&T’s case.