Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio has agreed to “work very close­ly” with the T&T Gov­ern­ment to find so­lu­tions to the Drag­on gas deal.

On April 8, the US ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, an­nounced that T&T’s li­cences grant­ed by the Unit­ed States’ Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC), which would fa­cil­i­tate the ex­ploita­tion of gas fields in Venezue­lan wa­ters, had been re­voked.

How­ev­er, in a phone call with the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day, Ru­bio’s team reaf­firmed “the strong US-Trinidad and To­ba­go bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship, em­pha­sis­ing shared pri­or­i­ties in re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion.”

In the state­ment yes­ter­day, Ru­bio said, “Sec­re­tary Ru­bio recog­nised that en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty is im­por­tant to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pros­per­i­ty and econ­o­my. Any out­comes of sanc­tions up­on the Maduro regime and Venezuela is in no way in­dica­tive of our re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go and the val­ue we place on it. The Sec­re­tary recog­nised the strate­gic im­por­tance of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy ini­tia­tives, and Young’s ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship in this area. Both sides agreed that we are go­ing to work very close­ly to find a so­lu­tion that achieves US ob­jec­tives re­gard­ing Venezuela with­out harm­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Ru­bio said he wel­comed Young’s ex­plo­ration of vi­able op­tions that sup­port the coun­try’s en­er­gy needs while re­main­ing con­sis­tent with US sanc­tions pol­i­cy.

Ru­bio said dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion, Young em­pha­sised the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to re­spon­si­ble en­er­gy sec­tor de­vel­op­ment and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion, while he (Ru­bio) re­it­er­at­ed the Unit­ed States’ sup­port for de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance and long-term sta­bil­i­ty across the Caribbean.

T&T was grant­ed an OFAC li­cence on Oc­to­ber 31, 2023, paving the way for the po­ten­tial ex­trac­tion of gas from Drag­on field in Venezue­lan wa­ters. A sec­ond li­cence was grant­ed on May 31, 2024, for the Cocuina-Man­akin field. Both li­cences were grant­ed for a pe­ri­od of two years.