While he’s no longer this coun­try’s En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP-elect Stu­art Young is con­cerned fol­low­ing com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fu­ture gas deals, now that she be­lieves the “Drag­on is dead.”

Dur­ing her speech af­ter the swear­ing-in of her Cab­i­net at the Pres­i­dent’s House on Sat­ur­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had her sights set on gas talks with sev­er­al Cari­com states in­clud­ing Guyana, Suri­name and Grena­da.

She lat­er told the me­dia that the Drag­on Gas deal was dead.

Speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day, Young said the Drag­on deal has decades left to dance.

Young said, “Un­der­stand that when you im­me­di­ate­ly say the Drag­on is dead, what are you telling Shell? I am cer­tain in the board­rooms to­day, in Lon­don, in Hous­ton, there is deep analy­sis go­ing on. Every­thing that you say as a leader of the coun­try is not for do­mes­tic pol­i­tics alone and that is the sim­ple cau­tion.”

“It is very ir­re­spon­si­ble for any gov­ern­ment gov­ern­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, want­i­ng what is best for Trinidad and To­ba­go, with­out even look­ing at the doc­u­men­ta­tion that ex­ists to im­me­di­ate­ly de­clare it dead. The truth is we have a 30-year li­cence with Venezuela,” he added.

In re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s plan to send her new­ly-mint­ed En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to Grena­da, Young said it’s pre­sump­tu­ous to get Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­cit­ed over re­serves that may not even yield fruit.

In­stead, his ad­vice to the new ad­min­is­tra­tion would be to con­tin­ue to per­suade in­ter­na­tion­al gas com­pa­nies to work with this coun­try.

He said fail­ure to do so would run T&T prob­lems.

“Every pos­si­bil­i­ty with our Cari­com neigh­bours was al­ready be­ing ex­plored and this hold out for some field called Nut­meg in Grena­da. I pray to God there are re­serves there and maybe ex­plo­ration wells will find it in years to come. But it is nowhere close to mar­ket,” Young ex­plained.

In a re­lease on Sun­day, the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go ac­knowl­edged that gas was dis­cov­ered be­tween Grena­da and Trinidad in 2017, but ad­mit­ted that there’s been lit­tle in­for­ma­tion since.

How­ev­er, the cham­ber said if the fields can be eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­vel­oped it will be an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­port gas in­to T&T’s gas net­work through ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Mooni­lal for com­ment, all calls and mes­sages went unan­swered.

When it comes to Suri­name and Guyana, Young said that even if there are sig­nif­i­cant gas re­serves there, the coun­try needs to fo­cus on its fea­si­bil­i­ty.

He added that Venezuela will still be in­volved be­cause any pipeline from Guyana or Suri­name that comes to T&T must pass through Venezue­lan wa­ters.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da Dick­son Mitchell as well as Grena­da’s min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for Cli­mate Re­silience, the En­vi­ron­ment and Re­new­able En­er­gy Ker­ryne Z James, but those calls were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.