Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, like lead­ers of the Eu­ro­pean Union, France, Britain, Ger­many, Cana­da and oth­ers, has ex­pressed sup­port for a peace­ful de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion in Venezuela, where the will of the peo­ple is ex­pressed in the choice of who will lead the coun­try in­to the fu­ture. The PM has made it very clear her Gov­ern­ment will not back any in­di­vid­ual leader but sup­ports a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion an­chored “in free and fair elec­tions in the near fu­ture. The Venezue­lan peo­ple must choose their lead­ers,” says Per­sad-Bisses­sar. “If they choose Del­cy Ro­driguez or Maria Macha­do, or any­one else through fair elec­tions, my gov­ern­ment will work with them.”

In a sim­i­lar vein, the Bu­reau of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ments has called for peace­ful di­a­logue “to en­sure Venezuela’s sta­bil­i­ty, good gov­er­nance, democ­ra­cy and pros­per­i­ty for the peo­ple of Venezuela.” Every­one is on the same page here.

In­clud­ing US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, who wants “to see a Venezuela tran­si­tion.” But when will this hap­pen? “On­ly time will tell,” said Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to the New York Times, when asked how long the ad­min­is­tra­tion will de­mand di­rect over­sight of Venezuela, with the hov­er­ing threat of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary ac­tion from an ar­ma­da just off­shore. Last Fri­day, the pres­i­dent said that more US at­tacks on Venezuela “will not be need­ed” but that Amer­i­can war­ships off the coun­try’s coast would stay in place.

The sit­u­a­tion re­mains volatile. Af­ter be­ing sworn in as Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­dríguez said on tele­vi­sion, “There is on­ly one pres­i­dent in this coun­try, and his name is Nicolás Maduro. We will not be any­one’s colony.”

But Trump warned that Ro­dríguez ei­ther meets US de­mands or “pay a very big price, prob­a­bly big­ger than Maduro.” Ro­dríguez then is­sued a con­cil­ia­to­ry state­ment of col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­op­er­a­tion with the US, but soon af­ter­wards re­sumed de­fi­ance, say­ing “there is no for­eign agent gov­ern­ing Venezuela.” Then last week­end, Ro­dríguez, who speaks “all the time” with Mar­co Ru­bio, en­list­ed US mil­i­tary sup­port to re­turn an oil tanker that left Venezuela with­out per­mis­sion. Ro­dríguez has to “walk a tightrope,” says Phil Gun­son, Cri­sis Group an­a­lyst in Cara­cas.

The prob­lems are deep. The Fi­nan­cial Times points to “Gun-tot­ing para­mil­i­taries ter­ri­fy­ing civil­ians in the cities; Colom­bian guer­ril­las run­ning drugs and gold along the bor­ders; and mil­i­tary of­fi­cers rul­ing their patch­es as per­son­al fief­doms.” All pos­ing a ma­jor threat to Trump’s de­sire to “run” the coun­try and to any US com­pa­nies look­ing to in­vest.

“All of the armed groups can sab­o­tage any type of tran­si­tion just by the in­sta­bil­i­ty they cre­ate,” says mil­i­tary an­a­lyst An­drei Serbin Pont. “And to have any chance of hold­ing them in check, Ro­dríguez must keep on­side the regime’s two lead­ing an­ti-Amer­i­can hard­lin­ers: in­te­ri­or min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo and de­fence min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no.” Walk­ing the tightrope.

There are al­so chal­lenges to Trump’s wish for US oil com­pa­nies to move in­to Venezuela, “spend bil­lions of dol­lars” and “start mak­ing mon­ey for the coun­try.” We see strong scep­ti­cism among US en­er­gy ex­ec­u­tives. Venezuela is “un­in­vestable,” says Dar­ren Woods, head of Exxon Mo­bil, the largest US oil com­pa­ny, af­ter Trump “prod­ded” Amer­i­can en­er­gy je­fes at a White House meet­ing last Fri­day.

Woods em­pha­sised the big hur­dles.

“We’ve had our as­sets seized there twice. To re-en­ter a third time would re­quire some pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant changes.”

Trump didn’t like Woods’ re­sponse and threat­ened to block Exxon­Mo­bil from in­vest­ing in Venezuela. But as the Fi­nan­cial Times re­ports, the in­dus­try is un­like­ly to com­mit to big in­vest­ments with­out le­gal, fi­nan­cial and se­cu­ri­ty as­sur­ances from Wash­ing­ton. The pa­per quotes a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of an­oth­er large US com­pa­ny say­ing, “There would have to be some se­ri­ous guar­an­tees to get the big boys back in Venezuela. It’s go­ing to take a while to see re­al in­vest­ment in the coun­try and then longer to get pro­duc­tion up.”

Yet an­oth­er Amer­i­can en­er­gy gi­ant, Cono­coPhillips, al­so thinks it is “pre­ma­ture to spec­u­late on any fu­ture en­er­gy or busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties” in Venezuela.

Oth­er “for­mi­da­ble prob­lems” ex­ist. Oil prices are low, hav­ing fall­en more than 20 per cent in the past year, mak­ing it hard­er for com­pa­nies to jus­ti­fy new spend­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, as Pres­i­dent Trump him­self ac­knowl­edges, much of Venezuela’s oil in­fra­struc­ture is in dis­re­pair. It needs “a Her­culean task to bring their oil sec­tor back,” says Ja­son Bor­d­off of Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­tre on En­er­gy Pol­i­cy. And Pulitzer Prize-win­ning en­er­gy his­to­ri­an, Daniel Yer­gin, hits the nail on the head when he says, “So much de­pends on pol­i­tics and who’s in charge.”

Amidst such un­cer­tain­ty, whith­er Drag­on gas which T&T needs? Per­sad-Bisses­sar makes it clear, “Drag­on gas is the prop­er­ty of the Venezue­lan peo­ple. When­ev­er they choose a leader through free and fair de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, that leader will make a de­ci­sion on Drag­on gas.”

In oth­er words, on this crit­i­cal is­sue as well, the prime min­is­ter re­mains con­stant that a tran­si­tion to free and fair elec­tions and the reestab­lish­ment of democ­ra­cy is the way for­ward for Venezuela. And as I said ear­li­er, Cari­com Heads are on the same page, want­i­ng sta­bil­i­ty, good gov­er­nance, democ­ra­cy and pros­per­i­ty for the peo­ple of Venezuela. Clear­ly, whilst un­cer­tain­ty hov­ers over Venezuela, there is uni­ty in Cari­com on democ­ra­cy for our clos­est neigh­bour.