An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that he is “con­cerned,” but “not un­easy” about the im­pact US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s for­eign pol­i­cy plans will have on the Drag­on gas deal and the T&T econ­o­my.

In a tweet just af­ter mid­night, Ru­bio said, “To­day, pur­suant to @PO­TUS (US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump) di­rec­tive, I am pro­vid­ing for­eign-pol­i­cy guid­ance to ter­mi­nate all Biden-era oil and gas li­cences that have shame­ful­ly bankrolled the il­le­git­i­mate Maduro regime.”

Ru­bio’s tweet came a day af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced the ter­mi­na­tion of US en­er­gy com­pa­ny Chevron’s li­cence with Venezuela to ex­port crude oil.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, Young said the Cab­i­net meet­ing start­ed late be­cause he had spent the morn­ing en­gaged in con­ver­sa­tions with Shell and of­fi­cials at the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain to as­sess the im­pact of Ru­bio’s com­ment on T&T.

“At this stage, there has been no in­di­ca­tion of there be­ing any neg­a­tive ef­fect on T&T. We have al­ways said it is im­pos­si­ble to pre­dict the fu­ture, and it is im­pos­si­ble to pre­dict the de­ci­sions that cer­tain ad­min­is­tra­tions may take,” Young said.

He said the T&T Gov­ern­ment is very aware of how im­por­tant the Drag­on deal is to the en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty of T&T, and to the sta­bil­i­ty of the Cari­com re­gion, as well as South Amer­i­ca, ex­tend­ing as far as Eu­rope.

“We are very aware of how im­por­tant it is and who the de­ci­sion mak­ers are and we will con­tin­ue to do all we can. Can we pro­vide any as­sur­ance at this stage? The an­swer ob­vi­ous­ly is no. Are we en­gaged with the right peo­ple? We be­lieve we are. And we will con­tin­ue to work and at every step of the way, if there is some­thing to re­port, we will.”

Crit­i­cis­ing com­ments by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar about the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that he is re­sign­ing on March 16, Young said, “This deal and this trans­ac­tion and cross-bor­der gas is not for the PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment), it is not for the (Op­po­si­tion) Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. It is not for any po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty. It is for you, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said the Drag­on deal and the nat­ur­al gas that is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered in 2027 are go­ing to help the coun­try with for­eign ex­change.

“It is what is go­ing to help us to con­tin­ue pay­ing the bills on your be­half, con­tin­ue en­sur­ing that there are drugs in the hos­pi­tal and that chil­dren can con­tin­ue to re­ceive ed­u­ca­tion,” Young said.

As T&T’s Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Young has been at the fore­front of pur­su­ing agree­ments with the US and Venezuela gov­ern­ments to fa­cil­i­tate the ac­cess by T&T to Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on field, lo­cat­ed near to Trinidad’s north-west mar­itime bor­der, and to cross-bor­der gas from the Cocuina-Man­akin field, off Trinidad’s south-east coast.

As a re­sult of the ne­go­ti­a­tions, the US gov­ern­ment’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC), un­der the Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, grant­ed T&T and whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) ex­emp­tions from US sanc­tions to de­vel­op the Drag­on field, in part­ner­ship with multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy gi­ant, Shell, and the Cocuina-Man­akin field with en­er­gy ma­jor, BP.

Young al­so led the ne­go­ti­a­tions that re­sult­ed in Venezuela grant­i­ng T&T a 30-year ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence in De­cem­ber 2023 to ex­plore, pro­duce and ex­port nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on field to T&T. In Ju­ly 2024, T&T and Venezuela signed a 20-year agree­ment to de­vel­op the Cocuina-Man­akin field.

Dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Young was al­so asked whether the Gov­ern­ment or ei­ther of its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners had bankrolled the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, which is led by Nico­las Maduro.

“The an­swer to that is no. We have en­tered in­to a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion or li­cence that has been pub­lished in the Venezue­lan gazette...and you can see very clear­ly there what are the cash trans­ac­tions. Un­til the gas field starts up, and you start to pay things like roy­al­ty, we cer­tain­ly don’t fall in­to any large pay­ments or pay­ments made to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment,” Young said.

Re­spond­ing to an­oth­er ques­tion, Young said pay­ments have been made to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, but he could not say what the ex­act pay­ments were for, at this stage, “be­cause that is be­ing han­dled by NGC and Shell.”

He com­pared the pay­ments for the Drag­on field with pay­ments re­ceived by T&T from EOG Re­sources for two pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tracts (PSCs) in Jan­u­ary.

“Im­me­di­ate­ly on that sig­na­ture of mine be­ing put, along with the sig­na­ture of the EOG rep­re­sen­ta­tive, sig­nif­i­cant sums of US dol­lars were paid by EOG to the gov­ern­ment of T&T in some­thing called a sign­ing bonus. The same thing has hap­pened with all the oth­er PSCs we do. Would that be con­sid­ered sig­nif­i­cant? That is the nor­mal course of busi­ness in the oil and gas sec­tor...and that is what would have been done by Shell and NGC,” said the act­ing prime min­is­ter.