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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Mixed reaction to Dragon Gas Field deal

by

Gail Alexander
762 days ago
20230125

The an­nounce­ment that T&T will be li­censed to de­vel­op Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas Field won’t mag­i­cal­ly fix T&T’s dec­i­mat­ed en­er­gy sec­tor, as first gas from this project is years away, says the Op­po­si­tion UNC.

How­ev­er, Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, He­li­co­nia Foun­da­tion and for­mer UNC stal­wart Dr De­vant Ma­haraj, have all wel­comed the an­nounce­ment that T&T has re­ceived the US gov­ern­ment’s ap­proval (via OFAC waiv­er) to de­vel­op the gas field.

Var­i­ous quar­ters re­spond­ed yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment on Tues­day of the break­through de­vel­op­ment, which al­lows T&T to re­sume do­ing busi­ness con­cern­ing the Drag­on Field with Venezuela’s sanc­tioned state PDVSA com­pa­ny.

The li­cence, is­sued at T&T’s re­quest, is geared to en­hance Caribbean re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty. It marked fur­ther eas­ing of en­er­gy sanc­tions on Venezuela.

The Fi­nan­cial Post yes­ter­day stat­ed the de­ci­sion was the re­sult of “ex­ten­sive diplo­ma­cy” be­tween US Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris and Caribbean lead­ers who’d sought as­sis­tance to deal with high­er en­er­gy prices, fol­low­ing Rus­sia’s 2022 in­va­sion of Ukraine.

Har­ris spoke to Row­ley on Tues­day, the Post re­port­ed. How­ev­er, the Post said the Nico­las Maduro regime won’t be per­mit­ted to re­ceive any cash pay­ments from the project and this could make it dif­fi­cult for T&T to “craft a deal with Cara­cas.” It quot­ed un­named ex­perts say­ing it could take years “for in­vest­ment and de­vel­op­ment to bring Venezue­lan gas to T&T and boost LNG to Eu­rope.”

Yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion UNC Whip David Lee (En­er­gy spokesman) said,” The UNC has nev­er crit­i­cised the Drag­on Gas deal. We’ve al­ways raised ques­tions on the time­line of im­ple­men­ta­tion back in 2017/2018 be­cause this Gov­ern­ment high­light­ed it as the key to end­ing the gas short­age, which we knew ful­ly well was not pos­si­ble. The UNC was vin­di­cat­ed in its ques­tions for the na­tion­al in­ter­est, as the project was in­deed de­layed.”

He added, “The re­cent an­nounce­ment will not mag­i­cal­ly fix T&T’s dec­i­mat­ed en­er­gy sec­tor, as first gas from this project is years away.

“This an­nounce­ment, while of­fer­ing po­ten­tial in years to come, doesn’t change the vul­ner­a­ble grim en­er­gy re­al­i­ty that this Gov­ern­ment has dri­ven T&T’s oil and gas pro­duc­tion to its low­est in 18 years be­cause they’ve failed to in­no­vate the sec­tor out­side of this Drag­on Field.”

Lee said the an­nounce­ment of­fers lit­tle com­fort when ex­plo­ration and mon­etis­ing of gas with­in our own bor­ders con­tin­ue to be a prob­lem.

“The li­cence for Drag­on can­not take away that the Gov­ern­ment has sup­pressed and dec­i­mat­ed oth­er av­enues for in­creased gas pro­duc­tion, through its lack of in­no­va­tion by fail­ing to im­ple­ment prop­er fis­cal in­cen­tives which would dri­ve pro­duc­tion up,” he said.

“T&T needs av­er­age 4.1 bcf of gas per day to meet its prop­er de­mand, yet we are on­ly pro­duc­ing 2.8 bcf. Drag­on was not the key to meet­ing this de­mand. The key to this de­mand was in­creased in­no­va­tion and cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that en­cour­aged more ex­plo­ration.”

Lee added, “There’s al­so cause for fur­ther con­cern, as even with Wash­ing­ton’s grant­i­ng of Trinidad’s (sic) re­quest, they haven’t au­tho­rised pay­ments to Venezuela, which could make it dif­fi­cult for Trinidad to craft a deal with Cara­cas.

“So, we’re years away from first gas.” He said the UNC was high­light­ing the re­al­i­ty that “...This Gov­ern­ment still doesn’t have an an­swer for more gas in the short/medi­um term, as the Drag­on Field and all oth­er ma­jor gas projects list­ed by them are years from first gas.”

Browne: “Venezuela de­light­ed”

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, who’s at a CELAC sum­mit in Ar­genti­na, yes­ter­day said Venezuela’s new For­eign Af­fair Min­is­ter, Yvan Gil Pin­to, ap­proached him dur­ing the sum­mit and “ex­pressed his de­light at the an­nounce­ment” made on Tues­day.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young didn’t re­ply to queries on feed­back re­ceived from re­gion­al col­leagues on the de­vel­op­ment, when T&T and Venezuela will meet to craft the way for­ward and how it will work if Venezuela isn’t al­lowed pay­ment and what arrange­ment T&T would use.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce stat­ed, “We view this in­for­ma­tion re­leased on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of par­tic­i­pat­ing in ac­cess to ex­plore the op­por­tu­ni­ties which Drag­on Field pro­vides, as good news for T&T.

“This will pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties along the val­ue chain from the up­stream pro­duc­ers of LNG to the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries. It should lead to en­hanced eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and en­hance the coun­try’s val­ues in the glob­al en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Pos­si­ble buffer to T&T—De­vant

With an an­tic­i­pat­ed in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty, which fol­lows an in­crease in petrol and diesel, along with in­creas­ing food prices, the Drag­on Field deal may just be the life­line T&T needs to buffer the pos­si­ble eco­nom­ic hard­ships that lurk on the hori­zon, for­mer UNC MP Dr De­vant Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day.

“With the present glob­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate an­tic­i­pat­ing a world­wide re­ces­sion, T&T’s pop­u­la­tion must con­grat­u­late the T&T Gov­ern­ment with the waiv­er to ex­plore the Drag­on nat­ur­al gas field,” he said.

“With those sanc­tions, how­ev­er, now lift­ed it, clears the way for T&T to sub­stan­tial­ly ben­e­fit from the arrange­ments. The Gov­ern­ment must be com­mend­ed and sup­port­ed in en­sur­ing that this ef­fort ma­te­ri­alis­es in the fastest pos­si­ble time to ben­e­fit the pop­u­la­tion.”

The He­li­co­nia Foun­da­tion for Young Pro­fes­sion­als al­so hailed the news as a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean and Eu­rope, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the war in Ukraine.

He­li­co­nia con­grat­u­lat­ed Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and the Gov­ern­ment “on its re­mark­able achieve­ment” of the US gov­ern­ment’s ap­proval.

“This is a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean and Eu­rope, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the on­go­ing war in Ukraine, and is tes­ta­ment to the dili­gence and ded­i­ca­tion of this Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion. This mo­men­tous achieve­ment will bring in­valu­able ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of T&T, in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic growth, job op­por­tu­ni­ties and oth­er pros­per­ous out­comes.”

It added, “It’s a pos­i­tive step for­ward for our coun­try and a stel­lar ex­am­ple of diplo­ma­cy at work. It must nev­er be for­got­ten this ad­min­is­tra­tion has been care­ful to pre­serve long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ships with the USA and Venezuela, even when in the case of the lat­ter, it was deemed un­pop­u­lar to do so.”

See Page 15


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