Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@guardian.co.tt

For­mer plan­ning min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie hopes the Gov­ern­ment cap­i­talis­es on the pres­ence of Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken to ad­dress this coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas is­sues.

Yes­ter­day Blinken ar­rived in T&T to par­tic­i­pate in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty’s (Cari­com) Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing and the 50th An­niver­sary of Cari­com cel­e­bra­tion.

Tewarie, al­so a for­mer prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in St Au­gus­tine, told Guardian Me­dia that Blinken is a very high-lev­el of­fi­cial, and this was an op­por­tune time for T&T to im­press up­on him the need to fi­nalise a sanc­tion waiv­er to fi­nal­ly al­low this coun­try to im­port nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas Field.

“We are soon go­ing to be pro­duc­ing on­ly half of the nat­ur­al gas we need, and there­fore we need that gas from Venezuela very bad­ly, and I think we should put it to the Sec­re­tary of State that this is a ne­ces­si­ty, and we need US sup­port to make this hap­pen,” Tewarie said.

In Jan­u­ary 2023, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the Unit­ed States had agreed to waive sanc­tions against Venezuela, clear­ing the way for T&T to im­port nat­ur­al gas. How­ev­er, he said spe­cif­ic terms had to be fi­nalised adding that while this was a gi­ant step for­ward, sig­nif­i­cant work need­ed to be done.

Dr Tewarie be­lieves an­oth­er ma­jor step should be tak­en dur­ing Blinken’s vis­it.

“I know there are lo­cal pol­i­tics at play where they have to be tough on Maduro, they have an in­ter­est in free and fair elec­tions but that should not af­fect the deal with Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment be­cause we ab­solute­ly need the nat­ur­al gas.”

The Unit­ed States, dur­ing the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, had placed strict eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on the Nico­las Maduro-led Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment in 2019 be­cause it claimed the Gov­ern­ment was sup­press­ing hu­man rights in the coun­try.

Tewarie said Blinken was a gift­ed diplo­mat, and he be­lieves pre­sent­ing a rea­son­able case to him can make a dif­fer­ence.

“The US is known to be able to make ex­cep­tions in the con­text of al­lies and friends and in the con­text of ne­ces­si­ties that must be tak­en in­to ac­count, and I think Trinidad and To­ba­go is an al­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go is a friend.”

T&T’s En­er­gy Cham­ber in Jan­u­ary said im­port­ing gas from Venezuela will pro­vide nat­ur­al gas for the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal and LNG sec­tors, help­ing se­cure jobs, for­eign ex­change, and fur­ther busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that the pay­ments to Venezuela could be made through hu­man­i­tar­i­an sup­plies.

Mean­while from a Cari­com per­spec­tive, Tewarie ad­vised re­gion­al lead­ers to use this op­por­tu­ni­ty for mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant part­ner­ship with the US. He told Guardian Me­dia that right now, Caribbean coun­tries are not ben­e­fit­ing as they should.

“In my view, the biggest chal­lenge in the Caribbean is that we have be­come un­com­pet­i­tive and we are not em­brac­ing and ab­sorb­ing the tech avail­able to get us in­to a com­pet­i­tive sphere. What that means is that if we don’t do these things we will be caught up in a mid­dle-in­come coun­try trap where we can’t grow, we can’t cre­ate jobs, we can’t cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties, we can’t par­tic­i­pate in glob­al mar­kets and we are not get­ting new in­vest­ments.”