Ke­jan Haynes

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Unit­ed States de­ci­sion to waive sanc­tions against Venezuela, clear­ing the way for Trinidad and To­ba­go to im­port nat­ur­al gas from our neigh­bours, is “a sig­nif­i­cant and hap­py day” for him, his team, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cari­com.

Row­ley made the com­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to a ques­tion about what the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op the Drag­on Gas Field would mean for the coun­try fi­nan­cial­ly. Work­ing the math, the Prime Min­is­ter said T&T could ben­e­fit to the tune of around US$450 mil­lion with a “de­cent prof­it on the mar­gin.”

“The Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment has to­day ap­proved Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on Field via an OFAC Waiv­er from sanc­tions with spe­cif­ic terms to be fi­nalised,” Dr Row­ley had read just mo­ments be­fore from a writ­ten state­ment dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.

“What this means is that the re­stric­tions on the Drag­on Gas Field de­vel­op­ment are now re­lieved and all rel­e­vant par­ties can progress the plans to re­sult in nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela.”

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.

How­ev­er, the terms of the waiv­er are still to be worked out, as the Prime Min­is­ter said there is still sig­nif­i­cant work to be done, but he not­ed it was “a gi­ant step for­ward.”

The li­cense has been grant­ed for two years with the op­tion to ex­tend, al­though the T&T Gov­ern­ment orig­i­nal­ly asked for a ten-year li­cense, Row­ley said. The ex­act start date of the li­cense is al­so yet to be worked out.

He ac­knowl­edged the US could eas­i­ly up­date its sanc­tions against Venezuela, which could im­pact the deal. How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter is choos­ing to re­main op­ti­mistic, adding there is noth­ing in the terms so far that the Gov­ern­ment could not meet.

Row­ley de­clined to say what the US was get­ting out of the deal.

The US, how­ev­er, im­ports $231 mil­lion worth of urea am­mo­ni­um ni­trate fer­tilis­ers from T&T and stands to ben­e­fit from clean fu­el and fer­tilis­ers if the deal goes through.

Ex­plain­ing some of the par­tic­u­lars of the deal, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the li­cense was grant­ed to T&T.

“NGC will be the body that will be used to trans­act the deal work­ing along with Shell, and this is for the Drag­on Field.”

Row­ley said there are a lot of terms to be fi­nalised be­tween T&T, Venezuela and Shell but said the high­est hur­dle has been crossed and the de­vel­op­ment can be ac­cel­er­at­ed.

The fields will still be owned and run by Venezuela’s stat­ed-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), but Shell will be the op­er­a­tor in the field, Row­ley clar­i­fied.

“The field is a PDVSA field,” Row­ley said.

“What­ev­er li­cense we get from Venezuela to op­er­ate the field, Venezuela would be in­volved in that.”

De­vel­op­ment will not be im­me­di­ate though, as Row­ley could not give a time frame for first gas, say­ing he would have to be ad­vised by Shell and the Venezuela gov­ern­ment. He said it needs to be soon, how­ev­er, be­cause the mar­ket needs the prod­ucts.

“We’ll be go­ing full speed ahead to get it to mar­ket at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty,” Row­ley said.

“It’s not go­ing to be to­mor­row. It’s not go­ing to be 2023 be­cause there’s a lot of work to be done, a lot of lead time, and a lot of en­gi­neer­ing work to be done.”

One of the ma­jor caveats of the deal is the re­quire­ment T&T shares the spoils with Cari­com na­tions.

“One of the main con­di­tions is that we give pri­or­i­ty to sup­ply­ing our Caribbean neigh­bours who need it,” Row­ley said.

He thanked the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic Pres­i­dent Luis Rodol­fo Abi­nad­er, say­ing he was in­stru­men­tal in the dis­cus­sion of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion, and adding that coun­try looks to T&T for en­er­gy sup­plies. Ja­maica will al­so be a ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ry un­der the agree­ment.

Row­ley specif­i­cal­ly thanked Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, Suri­name Pres­i­dent Chan San­tokhi, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne and Prime Min­is­ter of The Ba­hamas Phillip Davis.

“All of whom have been in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cor­ner push­ing us to this point of en­cour­ag­ing the Unit­ed States to do this,” Row­ley said.

He said the cost to the coun­try would be min­i­mal, name­ly le­gal fees “very small” in com­par­i­son to what can come out of it.

When asked if Venezuela could not re­ceive cash pay­ments, he said that wasn’t a prob­lem be­cause it’s been dealt with be­fore, say­ing it could be paid for in many ways.

Told that he had warned on Sun­day of “dif­fi­cult days” ahead in the en­er­gy sec­tor and asked if the deal changes his mood, the PM said, “A lit­tle bit.”

“The in­fra­struc­ture to han­dle these kinds of re­sources to bring to the world mar­ket usu­al­ly needs a hori­zon of 20-25 years if you’re go­ing to make new in­vest­ment. So, if your re­serves are on­ly drib­bling along with a five or ten-year hori­zon, you can’t look to any new in­vest­ment. So, hav­ing ac­cess to gas fields out­side of our bor­der, this is a sem­i­nal de­vel­op­ment be­cause it’s the first time we have had this op­por­tu­ni­ty,” Row­ley said.

Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment, US Am­bas­sador to T&T Can­dace Bond said it re­in­forced the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and the US.

“To­day, we re­in­force the close­ness, strength, and depth of our over 200 years of friend­ship and co­op­er­a­tion. Up­on my ar­rival, I promised to work to fur­ther strength­en our coun­tries’ unique bond, to deep­en and grow our al­ready close re­la­tion­ship, and to en­sure that our co­op­er­a­tion con­tin­ues to yield pos­i­tive re­sults for both of our coun­tries,” Bond said.

“We share Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ur­gency in con­tribut­ing to glob­al en­er­gy and food se­cu­ri­ty. We have lis­tened to the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mes­sage that it has the ca­pac­i­ty and will­ing­ness to ame­lio­rate eco­nom­ic and hu­man­i­tar­i­an crises around the re­gion and the world.”