PM refutes Venezuela’s claim that T&T colluded with US in oil tanker seizure

Akash Sama­roo &

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s ac­cu­sa­tion that this coun­try col­lud­ed with the US in the seizure of its oil tanker as “false pro­pa­gan­da.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said if the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has a prob­lem with the seizure of the oil tanker “Skip­per,” then they should take it up with Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“They should di­rect their com­plaints to Pres­i­dent Trump, as it is the US mil­i­tary that has seized the sanc­tioned oil tanker. In the mean­time, we con­tin­ue to have peace­ful re­la­tions with the Venezue­lan peo­ple.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so told Guardian Me­dia she is un­both­ered by the Nicolás Maduro’s regime’s threat to “ex­tin­guish” all nat­ur­al gas deals with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Prime Min­is­ter said, “We have nev­er de­pend­ed on Venezuela for nat­ur­al gas sup­plies. We have ad­e­quate re­serves with­in our ter­ri­to­ry. We are ag­gres­sive­ly work­ing to re­duce bu­reau­crat­ic bar­ri­ers to speed up ap­provals for en­er­gy com­pa­nies.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added,” The re­al is­sue is bu­reau­cra­cy is hin­der­ing our ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion. “

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter and en­er­gy ex­pert Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan al­so made it clear yes­ter­day that re­cent de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing Venezuela amount to no shock and or ma­jor blow for T&T, be­cause there was nev­er any gas sup­ply com­ing in­to the coun­try in the first place.

She in­sist­ed that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion sim­ply con­firms what has been the re­al­i­ty for some time: Venezuela is not a source of re­lief for the coun­try’s wors­en­ing gas short­age. She said the frame­work gov­ern­ing uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ments for cross-bor­der fields re­mains in place, but it does not re­vive projects that were al­ready stalled or shut down.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan point­ed out that the Drag­on gas arrange­ment was nev­er a uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ment or a for­mal en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion project. In­stead, it re­lied on lim­it­ed per­mis­sions that could not ad­vance with­out ap­provals from the Unit­ed States Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC). Those ap­provals, she not­ed, were nev­er se­cured in a way that al­lowed pro­duc­tion to pro­ceed.
She ex­plained that on­ly two cross-bor­der fields were ever po­ten­tial­ly af­fect­ed, Lo­ran-Man­a­tee and Co­quina-Man­akin. Lo­ran-Man­a­tee was de-uni­tised years ago af­ter the Unit­ed States de­clined to is­sue an OFAC li­cence dur­ing the Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion. As a re­sult, Trinidad and To­ba­go moved ahead in­de­pen­dent­ly, ex­tract­ing on­ly its share of the gas from the field.
Co­quina-Man­akin, she added, ef­fec­tive­ly came to a stop ear­li­er this year when the OFAC li­cence was can­celled, bring­ing joint op­er­a­tions linked to Drag­on Gas to an end. In that con­text, Seep­er­sad-Bachan stressed that there is no im­me­di­ate fall­out now be­cause pro­duc­tion from those fields had al­ready been halt­ed or re­strict­ed.
There will be no ne­go­ti­a­tions and no gas sup­ply com­ing from Venezuela un­der the cur­rent cir­cum­stances, she said, not­ing that the much-dis­cussed six-month OFAC li­cence was nev­er a li­cence to pro­duce gas. In­stead, it on­ly al­lowed for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ne­go­ti­a­tions, which have since col­lapsed.

While the Gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed that the Drag­on Gas OFAC li­cence re­mains tech­ni­cal­ly valid, Seep­er­sad-Bachan ar­gued it has no prac­ti­cal ef­fect. She point­ed out that any progress would have re­quired rene­go­ti­at­ing long-term ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion arrange­ments with Venezuela, a process she said ef­fec­tive­ly end­ed when the broad­er en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion frame­work was re­voked.

Look­ing ahead, she warned that T&T must now look else­where for gas, as do­mes­tic re­serves con­tin­ue to de­cline and for­eign ex­change pres­sures mount. How­ev­er, she cau­tioned against ex­pect­ing quick so­lu­tions from oth­er re­gion­al play­ers.

Grena­da, she said, re­mains far off the hori­zon, with prospec­tive re­sources still at an ear­ly stage and no proven com­mer­cial gas vol­umes or in­fra­struc­ture ca­pa­ble of sup­ply­ing T&T in the near to medi­um term.
Suri­name is al­so not a vi­able op­tion for now, she added. While re­cent dis­cov­er­ies are sig­nif­i­cant, Seep­er­sad-Bachan ex­plained that the fo­cus is on oil, not gas, and any gas-re­lat­ed in­fra­struc­ture would take years to de­vel­op.

For the fore­see­able fu­ture, she said, the coun­try’s on­ly re­al­is­tic op­tion is to ac­cel­er­ate de­vel­op­ment of its own acreage and pur­sue vi­able part­ner­ships, ac­cept­ing that Venezue­lan gas will not be part of the equa­tion.