The news that the Unit­ed States is now al­low­ing T&T to de­vel­op Venezue­lan gas in the Drag­on Field is a much-wel­comed achieve­ment borne out of the per­sis­tence and de­ter­mi­na­tion of the Gov­ern­ment to make it hap­pen through ex­ten­sive diplo­ma­cy.

Much ma­ligned in re­cent times for the high crime rate and ris­ing cost of liv­ing, this is a high mark for the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.

It is, how­ev­er, on­ly the be­gin­ning, as there are still some hur­dles to over­come, in­clud­ing how T&T and Venezuela will work out the ben­e­fits for Venezuela in light of the an­nounce­ment that cash will not be ex­changed for the gas T&T will be de­vel­op­ing.

There­fore, while we are ex­cit­ed about the prospects, we note the need for some pa­tience be­fore we see the gains from this.

By Dr Row­ley’s own ad­mit­tance, this is not a de­vel­op­ment that will see im­me­di­ate gains, cer­tain­ly not in this cal­en­dar year.

The de­vel­op­ment of in­fra­struc­ture to en­sure the gas flows through a 17-mile pipeline from the Drag­on Field to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate will take time.

That said, we are buoyed by the good news that the green light has come five years af­ter an agree­ment was signed with Venezuela to al­low for the Drag­on Field part­ner­ship, and two years af­ter it was halt­ed due to sanc­tions in­tro­duced by the Don­ald Trump regime.

The Gov­ern­ment’s faith and courage to pur­sue the deal when all seemed lost should be com­mend­ed.

With the econ­o­my strug­gling to re­cov­er from the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Dr Row­ley, in March last year, was san­guine that a “ray of hope” ex­ist­ed be­cause of his Gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing and per­sis­tent talks with high-lev­el Unit­ed States of­fi­cials.

Let’s not for­get, the Gov­ern­ment had gone so far as to pay lob­by­ists in Wash­ing­ton to ad­vo­cate on the coun­try’s be­half and both Dr Row­ley and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young trav­elled sev­er­al times to Wash­ing­ton for di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley al­so cred­it­ed oth­er Caribbean lead­ers in the push to­ward achiev­ing this goal.

The re­gion stands to ben­e­fit from this de­vel­op­ment too, as T&T strength­ens its po­si­tion to sup­ply more gas, there­by de­creas­ing the re­gion’s re­liance on en­er­gy re­sources from oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing Rus­sia.

Re­gion­al lead­ers had al­so held ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions with US Vice-Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris last year, with much of the dis­cus­sions cen­tred around Caribbean en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Al­though the full de­tails of the agree­ment are still to un­fold, it’s al­ready been an­nounced that a por­tion of the gas de­vel­oped from the Drag­on Field will be ex­port­ed to Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

We look for­ward to more of the fine de­tails on how this li­cence agree­ment will ben­e­fit T&T and the re­gion.

Com­ing on the heels of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s De­cem­ber 2022 an­nounce­ment that T&T had reg­is­tered its first fis­cal sur­plus in 14 years, we take heart that T&T is po­si­tion­ing it­self fur­ther for a rise in in­vestor con­fi­dence that can hope­ful­ly see the restart of ma­jor sec­tors that went dor­mant dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od.

Dr Row­ley’s promise in his New Year’s mes­sage of brighter days ahead, may thus very well prove true.