Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Fol­low­ing the Unit­ed States’ re­vo­ca­tion of li­cences for T&T’s gas projects with Venezuela, David Lee, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) shad­ow en­er­gy min­is­ter, has ac­knowl­edged the need for di­a­logue with US au­thor­i­ties be­fore pur­su­ing cross-bor­der en­er­gy agree­ments.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at UNC’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, Lee said should the UNC as­sume gov­ern­ment, it would pri­ori­tise con­sul­ta­tions with the US to en­sure the vi­a­bil­i­ty of en­er­gy projects with Venezuela.

“We don’t have any closed doors, I think what we will do is do it the prop­er way and the prop­er way is that we will work with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion go­ing for­ward and see how that can open back that door with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and we will do it the prop­er way we won’t be work­ing with sanc­tioned na­tions to the detri­ment of our cit­i­zens,” he said.

Lee added that the US re­vo­ca­tion of OFAC li­cences for the Drag­on and Man­akin-Cocuina gas deals was noth­ing to cel­e­brate. 

While he crit­i­cised the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion’s han­dling of the deal over the years and its fail­ure to de­ploy the nec­es­sary strate­gies to se­cure it amid shift­ing geo pol­i­tics, Lee said it was not the end of the road for the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

He called for Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who al­so serves as En­er­gy Min­is­ter, to be trans­par­ent about ne­go­ti­a­tions with his Venezue­lan coun­ter­parts.

“We want to ask how much mon­ey was spent al­ready via maybe a state com­pa­ny, whether it was NGC or even the oil com­pa­nies that were in this deal with this present gov­ern­ment, whether it was Shell, et cetera,” he said.

“What was spent and what was the im­pli­ca­tions for the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

The OFAC li­cence for Cocuina-Man­akin was grant­ed on May 31, 2024, and was valid un­til May 31, 2026, while the re­vised li­cence for the Drag­on gas field was grant­ed on Oc­to­ber 17, 2023, and was set to ex­pire on Oc­to­ber 31.

In 2023, T&T and Venezuela signed a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment over the en­er­gy deal.

Young said the US de­ci­sion was not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing the first or­der from Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on March 24 was for tar­iffs on oil-based prod­ucts from Venezuela.

Young as­sured that he will con­tin­ue to pur­sue the mat­ter through le­gal chan­nels.

How­ev­er, Lee said a strate­gic blue­print is need­ed to nav­i­gate the cur­rent geo-po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

“We will di­rect­ly en­gage the Unit­ed States and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. We feel that we have the tal­ent to meet with them, to en­gage them, to give them the con­fi­dence of try­ing to work with them in re­spect to our cross-bor­der is­sues and I want to put it out there that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar led ad­min­is­tra­tion on April 29, has not been deal­ing with the Maduro gov­ern­ment and we have is­sues we raised with the Maduro gov­ern­ment.”

UNC shad­ow Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo said he had no con­fi­dence in Young’s abil­i­ty to ad­vance T&T’s po­si­tion on cross bor­der en­er­gy deals with Venezuela.

“So Mr Ne­go­tia­tor Stu­art Young walks in­to a room to dis­cuss with the US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, to dis­cuss the fu­ture of Drag­on gas. What did he come back with?

“We then had a wors­en­ing trav­el ad­vi­so­ry, we then had a 10 per cent tar­iff be­ing in­tro­duced on goods and ser­vices ex­port­ed from Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and now we have the an­nounce­ment of the death of Drag­on,” Tan­coo said.