Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

All prepa­ra­tions were in place and sys­tems were on stand­by yes­ter­day, as Gov­ern­ment was aware of the in­clement weath­er that would have af­fect­ed T&T, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says.

Row­ley gave the re­sponse at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain when asked by CNC3’ about re­ports of flood­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in South Trinidad and whether re­sources were de­ployed to deal with sit­u­a­tion.

This fol­lowed heavy rains T&T sus­tained over the week­end, par­tic­u­lar­ly in South Trinidad.

Row­ley said, “I read the in­com­ing weath­er fore­cast and was in touch with the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (Faris Al-Rawi). I’ve asked him and he has ver­i­ly con­firmed to me that all prepa­ra­tions were in place, they were all on stand­by.

“He sent me a lot of in­for­ma­tion as I was com­ing (to the brief­ing), I haven’t read it yet but I’ve seen the ‘dash­board’ of what is hap­pen­ing and the rel­e­vant de­part­ments are on the job.”

Row­ley added, “I think one or two per­sons have been res­cued and the de­part­ment of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port are alert to it and on the job, as we were aware that we were ex­pect­ing some in­clement weath­er.”

Row­ley was al­so asked about the Drag­on Field gas deal with Venezuela, af­ter the US ear­li­er this year grant­ed a two-year li­cence on the mat­ter. He said the length of the two-year li­cence was not an im­ped­i­ment, but not­ed the ac­cess to the li­cence to op­er­ate from Venezuela was “where the ob­sta­cle is.”

Row­ley said Cari­com had, for the first time, is­sued a state­ment call­ing for the US to lift its sanc­tions on Venezuela. Cari­com and the US re­cent­ly held a joint Ba­hamas meet­ing.

Row­ley said the re­gion­al call to lift US sanc­tions against Venezuela wasn’t T&T’s po­si­tion alone, since Cari­com al­so wants to do busi­ness with Venezuela. He said at Cari­com’s re­cent meet­ing with the US, re­gion­al states spoke very force­ful­ly on their need to par­tic­i­pate in the Petro­caribe arrange­ment that is avail­able to Cari­com if Venezuela is re­lieved of US sanc­tions.

He said the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed to the meet­ing showed how Cari­com gov­ern­ments are strain­ing to pay for the full price—hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars- of fu­el and the ben­e­fits that would arise from ac­cess­ing dis­count­ed fu­el from Venezuela.

Row­ley said he didn’t know how the US would re­act to the call.

“But I hope that they see the pres­sure Cari­com small states are un­der and I trust they’ll give us some re­lief,” he added.

Row­ley al­so dis­missed claims that T&T would re-start At­lantic Train One, adding that this was not part of all the en­er­gy dis­cus­sions he’s been in, since the is­sue right now is for more gas for Trains Two, Three and Four.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who was asked about the fu­el price, said the oil price is some­thing that is very volatile. Not­ing Sau­di Ara­bia’s re­cent de­ci­sions to cut pro­duc­tion and that the price had jumped $7 in one day, Im­bert added, ”So, if we had tried to ma­nip­u­late the price the day be­fore – what would have hap­pened the fol­low­ing day? We’d have had to send it back up again?

“So that’s some­thing you have to look at over a pe­ri­od of time, you can’t jump to con­clu­sions.”