Op­po­si­tion law­mak­er, a mem­ber of the Venezue­lan As­sem­bly, Car­los Valero is warn­ing Gov­ern­ment that any treaties or con­tracts signed be­tween the two coun­tries and which have not been passed by the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly in Venezuela might not be ho­n­oured in the fu­ture.

In an in­ter­view with CNC 3 yes­ter­day be­fore head­ing back to Venezuela, Valero claimed the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly was the on­ly le­git­i­mate body in Venezuela with the au­thor­i­ty to en­sure that agree­ments were le­gal and would be ho­n­oured mov­ing for­ward.

Valero urged lo­cal law-mak­ers not to be swayed or ma­nip­u­lat­ed by the promis­es of the cur­rent Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion UNC had raised queries about the le­git­i­ma­cy of the deal in Par­lia­ment when Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee asked if it was ap­proved by the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly.

In re­sponse, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said: “I am Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go and I could on­ly speak to and for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­volve­ment in this mat­ter. What goes on in Venezuela is a mat­ter for the Venezue­lans, and I can­not speak to what the as­sem­bly is re­quired to do.”

On Au­gust 27, the Prime Min­is­ter and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro signed an agree­ment in Cara­cas that will al­low the is­land to ac­cess gas from the off­shore Drag­on field.

Row­ley had told the me­dia then, “We may have been able to save our in­dus­try by get­ting a se­cure source of gas for the down­stream sec­tor. It may over time al­so al­low us to look at the ex­pan­sion of the down­stream sec­tor and in­vest­ments there, as long as we can show in­vestors we have a se­cured stream of gas.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was not will­ing to dis­close the price of the gas, point­ing to com­mer­cial con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, but he re­vealed it will be 150 mil­li­on stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d), with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of it in­creas­ing to 300 mm­scf/d.

The pipeline car­ry­ing the gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas field in East­ern Venezuela to Shell’s Hi­bis­cus plat­form off the North Coast will be built and owned in a joint ven­ture be­tween the NGC and Shell Trinidad. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of the con­struc­tion of the pipeline is close to TT $1 bil­li­on.

T&T has been suf­fer­ing from gas cur­tail­ment for the last six years and it has led to a short­fall in the pro­duc­tion of all the com­mo­di­ties in­clud­ing LNG and Petro­chem­i­cals and as a con­se­quence sig­nif­i­cant loss of rev­enue to the trea­sure and for­eign ex­change. Trinidad and To­ba­go will re­ceive its first gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Field in 2020, ac­cord­ing to Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic’s Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Manuel Queve­do, last month.

Open home to Venezue­lan refugees—Valero

As­sess­ing the refugee sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad, Valero plead­ed with lo­cals open their hearts and homes to those flee­ing the eco­nom­ic cri­sis in Venezuela.

He said it was im­por­tant now to en­sure there was a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach to the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis - both in T&T and Venezuela.

Valero said in 2018, in­fla­tion reached one mil­lion per cent in Venezuela.

And with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) pro­ject­ing it would reach 10 mil­lion per cent in 2019, he said this was why three mil­lion peo­ple had fled Venezuela.

He ad­mit­ted a large num­ber of these per­sons had come to T&T, but he claimed the is­sue was a “tem­po­ral” one and as such, he was im­plor­ing Trinida­di­ans to help as much as they could.

Valero called for Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port to ad­dress the is­sue on a mul­ti-lat­er­al lev­el us­ing re­sources from the US and EU.

He said Venezuela was de­ter­mined to get through this cri­sis but need­ed the help and sup­port of oth­er coun­tries in the mean­time.

Valero said he and his coun­try­men were em­bar­rassed by the cur­rent cri­sis which had re­sult­ed in hun­dreds of Venezue­lans il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing T&T.

How­ev­er, he ap­pealed to the pub­lic to un­der­stand that the on­ly guilty sec­tor in this sit­u­a­tion was the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment as he prayed noth­ing like this ever hap­pened in T&T.

From dis­cus­sions with Venezue­lans liv­ing in T&T, Valero said many had re­port­ed go­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) for help, but in the ab­sence of any leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late their mi­gra­to­ry prob­lems - they felt they were not pro­tect­ed by the State.

As such, Valero re­newed a call for bind­ing le­gal agree­ments to ad­dress the cri­sis.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he in­vit­ed the Gov­ern­ment to make this prob­lem vis­i­ble and in­crease aware­ness of this prob­lem - as there were 10,000 Venezue­lans cur­rent­ly seek­ing asy­lum in T&T.

He claimed there were 60,000 Venezue­lans in T&T, but warned this could reach as much as 100,000 or even 200,000 as he said the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela was not go­ing to im­prove any­time soon based on the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion.

Valero said Venezuela did not have any mal­ice or ill-will to­wards T&T and its’ peo­ple, but that his peo­ple need­ed the help of this coun­try to get through the cri­sis.