SOBERS OFF TO CARACAS

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A long-an­tic­i­pat­ed diplo­mat­ic meet­ing be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela is set to take place to­day, with For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers trav­el­ling to Cara­cas for talks with Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Félix Plasen­cia.

Se­nior Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­firmed the vis­it yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing it as “the open­ing of doors” and ex­press­ing op­ti­mism that it could lead to mean­ing­ful progress in re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries.

The one-day vis­it will see Sobers lead a del­e­ga­tion that in­cludes the Min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and oth­er of­fi­cials. How­ev­er, he is not ex­pect­ed to meet act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez.

Sobers’ trip ful­fils plans first an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment in 2025 to send a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela. In May 2025, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs dis­closed that a diplo­mat­ic note had been sent to Cara­cas out­lin­ing mat­ters T&T wished to dis­cuss, and that Venezuela had re­spond­ed pos­i­tive­ly.

Re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries lat­er be­came strained amid the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean be­tween 2025 and 2026 and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port for Wash­ing­ton’s ini­tia­tives in the re­gion.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sub­se­quent­ly de­clared per­sona non gra­ta by Venezuela be­cause of her sup­port for US poli­cies to­ward Venezuela. In Jan­u­ary 2026, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res, were cap­tured dur­ing a US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion in Cara­cas, af­ter which Ro­dríguez as­sumed the role of act­ing pres­i­dent.

Speak­ing at the han­dover of fire ten­ders in April, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­it­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to en­gage di­rect­ly with Venezuela. She said a T&T del­e­ga­tion would trav­el to Cara­cas “short­ly” to en­sure the coun­try se­cured its “just share” of cross-bor­der oil and gas re­sources, safe­guard­ing its en­er­gy in­ter­ests and eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty.

Her com­ments came against the back­drop of long­stand­ing dis­cus­sions over shared en­er­gy re­serves, in­clud­ing the Drag­on and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee gas fields, which are con­sid­ered vi­tal to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor and broad­er econ­o­my.

At the time, the Prime Min­is­ter said arrange­ments for the vis­it re­mained “a work in progress.”

Re­la­tions ap­peared to im­prove fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing dou­ble earth­quake that struck north­ern Venezuela on June 24, prompt­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to send hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance. Ro­dríguez lat­er thanked T&T for its sup­port in a cor­dial ex­change of let­ters with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who al­so high­light­ed the long­stand­ing ties be­tween the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said ef­forts to se­cure a meet­ing with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties had con­tin­ued through­out the year, with prepa­ra­tions for to­day’s talks in­ten­si­fy­ing over the past sev­er­al weeks.

While ques­tions had been raised about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a meet­ing with Act­ing Pres­i­dent Ro­dríguez, of­fi­cials con­firmed Sobers will meet on­ly with his coun­ter­part, For­eign Min­is­ter Plasen­cia.

Of­fi­cials said de­tails of the meet­ing’s agen­da, in­clud­ing whether en­er­gy and gas mat­ters will fea­ture promi­nent­ly, are ex­pect­ed to be out­lined to­day.

They al­so con­firmed that En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is not part of the del­e­ga­tion.

The vis­it comes as Venezuela has been en­gag­ing with a num­ber of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners. Ro­dríguez has re­cent­ly host­ed del­e­ga­tions from the Unit­ed States and Is­rael for dis­cus­sions on se­cu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion and post-earth­quake re­con­struc­tion. The US al­so re­cent­ly an­nounced a ma­jor oil agree­ment in­volv­ing par­tial con­trol of 65 bil­lion bar­rels of Venezue­lan oil re­serves by the US Gov­ern­ment and its part­ners.

Just over a week ago, Ro­dríguez host­ed Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley for a state vis­it dur­ing which sev­er­al bi­lat­er­al agree­ments were signed.

On the eve of Sobers’ de­par­ture, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials ex­pressed con­fi­dence about the sig­nif­i­cance of the vis­it.

“The Gov­ern­ment has worked on the mat­ter dili­gent­ly, and we will see what aris­es from this,” one of­fi­cial said. “It is a very pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment which will sure­ly au­gur well for Trinidad and To­ba­go. It will not be an op­por­tu­ni­ty wast­ed, and we look for­ward to what de­vel­ops and, hope­ful­ly, to more such mis­sions to Cara­cas to ad­dress spe­cialised is­sues.”