Trinidad and To­ba­go’s hopes of get­ting nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Field ap­pears no where clos­er to com­ing to fruition as the Unit­ed States is in­sist­ing that its poli­cies, in­clud­ing the sanc­tions on the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic, re­main in­tact.

There has been grow­ing hope of T&T be­ing able to ac­cess the much-need­ed nat­ur­al gas as a re­sult of what was seen as a thaw­ing of re­la­tions be­tween Cara­cas and Wash­ing­ton, but the US State De­part­ment is in­sist­ing that its pol­i­cy has not changed.

A spokesper­son from the US State De­part­ment told the Busi­ness Guardian, “Our Venezuela sanc­tions re­main in ef­fect.”

The State De­part­ment was asked the fol­low­ing:

Can the US say if it has re­ceived a re­quest from the T&T gov­ern­ment to al­low it to con­clude a cross-bor­der gas deal with Venezuela that at present could run afoul of US sanc­tions?

Is the US in agree­ment with al­low­ing a deal to go through that could lead to more glob­al LNG sup­plies?

Is the US stance on the Maduro regime the same as it was when sanc­tions were first im­ple­ment­ed?

If not what has changed its po­si­tion?

What does a change in pol­i­cy mean for coun­tries like T&T?

Is the US al­so con­sid­er­ing an ex­emp­tion for Cari­com coun­tries to ac­cess the Petro­Caribe deal?

With strong glob­al en­er­gy prices and the West mov­ing away from its re­liance on Russ­ian en­er­gy, there has been hope that the Unit­ed States would re­con­sid­er its ap­proach to the Maduro regime. In ad­di­tion of­fi­cials from the US and Venezuela met for the first time in years in what was seen as an ini­tial step to­wards nor­mal­i­sa­tion of the re­la­tion­ship.

This has ex­cit­ed the T&T Gov­ern­ment as a re­moval of sanc­tions could lead to sig­nif­i­cant­ly more gas avail­able in T&T for both petro­chem­i­cals and LNG ex­ports as this coun­try al­ready has ne­go­ti­at­ed and signed a term sheet to bring has from Venezuela’s drag­on field to mar­kets in Trinidad.

On­ly two Fri­days ago, Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro Mo­ros met with Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young at Mi­raFlo­res Pres­i­den­tial Palace in Cara­cas and they dis­cussed the strength­en­ing of bi­lat­er­al co-op­er­a­tion re­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from the Venezue­lan Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and In­for­ma­tion, both par­ties “con­sol­i­dat­ed their ties of co­op­er­a­tion, com­ple­men­tar­i­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Min­is­ter Young went to Venezuela on an of­fi­cial vis­it to re­view co-op­er­a­tion agree­ments and the strate­gic al­liance.

“In re­cent months, in en­er­gy mat­ters, both coun­tries have ex­pressed their de­sire and com­mit­ment to re­ac­ti­vate en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the Gov­ern­ment of T&T has pro­posed the search for for­mu­las for the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of gas and oil sup­plies at world lev­el,” the re­lease said.

In 2019 Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that T&T and Venezuela had re­scind­ed their agree­ment to joint­ly ex­ploit 10 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas in the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field and would in­stead de­vel­op it in­de­pen­dent­ly.

In a wide-rang­ing ad­dress at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the En­er­gy Cham­ber’s An­nu­al En­er­gy Con­fer­ence in 2019 Dr Row­ley an­nounced “it is re­gret­table that we can­not move ahead with the Drag­on Project which is on hold, at this time, due to US sanc­tions on Venezuela.”

He said this coun­try was ready “at a mo­ment’s no­tice,” to move ahead with the project “on the lift­ing of such re­stric­tions since vir­tu­al­ly all the prepara­to­ry work has been done.”

Notwith­stand­ing, this he said “we are pro­ceed­ing with the Man­a­tee ini­tia­tive which is the sin­gle most sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor in re­cent times.”

Row­ley said the con­tin­ued US sanc­tions on the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic had made it all but im­pos­si­ble to joint­ly de­vel­op the gas and as a re­sult the two coun­tries will go in­de­pen­dent­ly.

As a re­sult, Roy­al Dutch Shell which is the 100 per cent op­er­a­tor of the Man­a­tee block has agreed to de­vel­op it and has al­ready start­ed plan­ning its de­vel­op­ment.

Row­ley not­ed that this should add be­tween 275 to 400 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas by 2024, which he said would be a game chang­er. He ex­plained that the gas will be in the shal­low wa­ter and should be able to come on stream in few­er than five yeas.

The Lo­ran-Man­a­tee is a shal­low-wa­ter field that strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

Row­ley said ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ty, ini­tial­ly by state owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and lat­er by US Cor­po­ra­tion Chevron, which holds a 60 per cent in­ter­est, en­coun­tered a sub­stan­tial amount of gas in the Lo­ran field. In 2005 Chevron/BG, which held a joint in­ter­est of 50 per cent each in the Block 6 com­pris­ing Sub-Block 6b and Sub-Block 6d, dis­cov­ered the Man­a­tee field in Block 6d. Chevron sub­se­quent­ly sold its in­ter­est in Block 6 to Shell which now has 100 per cent in­ter­est in the block, the Prime Min­is­ter added.

“Shell has sanc­tioned this de­vel­op­ment and is cur­rent­ly gear­ing up to build the in­fra­struc­ture to pro­duce from this cross-bor­der field in keep­ing with the sched­ule as just men­tioned,” Row­ley not­ed.

In 2007, T&T and Venezuela ex­e­cut­ed a Frame­work Treaty re­lat­ing to the uni­ti­sa­tion of hy­dro­car­bon reser­voirs that ex­tend across the de­lim­i­ta­tion line be­tween the coun­tries.

The treaty es­tab­lished the gen­er­al frame­work un­der which any cross-bor­der reser­voir would be ex­ploit­ed.

Row­ley al­so not­ed that de­spite the strides made by the Caribbean, in its pen­e­tra­tion of sus­tain­able en­er­gy sources, re­new­able en­er­gy sys­tems ac­count for a small frac­tion of the re­gion’s un­tapped po­ten­tial.

“It is es­ti­mat­ed that the Caribbean holds 2,525 MW of po­ten­tial so­lar en­er­gy, 800 MW of po­ten­tial wind en­er­gy, and 3,770 MW of po­ten­tial ge­ot­her­mal en­er­gy. “

“These re­sources, if har­nessed, would dis­place ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion bar­rels of oil per year and save Caribbean coun­tries US$5.0 bil­lion in fu­el im­ports per an­num,” Row­ley added.

Over the last three months Row­ley has on two oc­ca­sions called for an end to the US sanc­tions on Venezuela. He said T&T “anx­ious­ly looks for­ward to the Unit­ed States play­ing that lead­er­ship role with CARI­COM and the na­tions of Mex­i­co and Nor­way to as­sist Venezue­lans in solv­ing their seem­ing­ly in­tractable po­lit­i­cal prob­lems.”

He re­vealed that ear­ly in his tenure his gov­ern­ment suc­ceed­ed in con­vinc­ing Venezuela to ex­port its nat­ur­al gas.

How­ev­er, he said, every­thing fell through be­cause of US sanc­tions.

“All we ask of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion is to re­set and give the di­a­logue a chance.

“Nor­way has en­cour­aged that, so did Mex­i­co,” Dr Row­ley said, not­ing that the Unit­ed States could bring all Venezue­lan par­ties to a ta­ble with the sup­port of Cari­com and oth­er na­tions, “read the Ri­ot Act and agree that Venezuela must solve Venezuela’s prob­lems in the in­ter­est of Venezuela and all of us who are co-de­pen­dents.” The Prime Min­is­ter told a meet­ing of the At­lantic coun­cil in Los An­ge­les ear­li­er this year.

He added, “We are con­vinced that it is pos­si­ble and some so­lu­tions can be had so sanc­tions can be re­moved and the sanc­tions that are in­creas­ing the hard­ships and cre­at­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis as iden­ti­fied by the Unit­ed Na­tions in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment and that the Unit­ed States be in­flu­enced by that.”