T&T delegation delays trip to Venezuela after earthquake tragedy, Moonilal says

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A planned Gov­ern­ment del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela for en­er­gy talks is ex­pect­ed to be de­layed fol­low­ing the re­cent 7.2 and 7.5 mag­ni­tude earth­quake tragedies in that coun­try.

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said prepa­ra­tions for the vis­it re­main un­der re­view as the Gov­ern­ment as­sess­es de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela fol­low­ing the earth­quakes, which caused loss of life and wide­spread dis­rup­tion to in­fra­struc­ture and es­sen­tial ser­vices. The dis­as­ter has trig­gered emer­gency re­sponse op­er­a­tions and re­newed re­gion­al at­ten­tion on the sta­bil­i­ty of on­go­ing diplo­mat­ic and tech­ni­cal en­gage­ments with Cara­cas.

The tim­ing of the pro­posed mis­sion is al­so un­fold­ing against the back­drop of ear­li­er ten­sions in en­er­gy re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela, which af­fect­ed mo­men­tum on as­pects of cross-bor­der co­op­er­a­tion and up­stream en­er­gy dis­cus­sions in re­cent months. De­spite this, both coun­tries have main­tained tech­ni­cal and diplo­mat­ic con­tact on en­er­gy-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly while main­tain­ing en­gage­ment with Venezue­lan coun­ter­parts.

He al­so ex­pressed con­do­lences to those af­fect­ed by the earth­quakes.

“The sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela has changed in the last week or so. I want to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press our very deep con­cern, our con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies who have lost vic­tims in that sit­u­a­tion, to ex­press our deep con­cern and our prayer to the peo­ple of Venezuela at this very dif­fi­cult time.”

Mooni­lal said T&T con­tin­ues to en­gage Venezuela on en­er­gy arrange­ments in­volv­ing mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Shell, but stressed that any agree­ments or re­lat­ed arrange­ments re­main sub­ject to con­di­tions, re­view and due dili­gence.

“We are work­ing with the part­ners, which in­clude Venezuela, which in­clude NGC, which in­clude Shell. We are re­quired to agree to cer­tain con­di­tions pur­suant to those arrange­ments, which we will do, which we will cer­tain­ly con­sid­er and do af­ter due dili­gence and so on.”

He in­di­cat­ed that some of the arrange­ments cur­rent­ly un­der re­view in­volve signed agree­ments that re­quire broad­er Gov­ern­ment con­sid­er­a­tion, with fi­nal di­rec­tion ex­pect­ed from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“It is ex­pect­ed, of course, that I am, in fact, I think I am a sig­na­to­ry to some­thing that I have to look at, but of course the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will look at it broad­ly, and the Prime Min­is­ter will give fur­ther di­rec­tions on that mat­ter.”

The min­is­ter said diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment with Venezuela con­tin­ues through es­tab­lished chan­nels. He added that both sides are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue ex­changes ei­ther through vis­its to Cara­cas or through en­gage­ments host­ed in T&T.

“Min­is­ter Sobers and I have been in touch with the Venezue­lan Mis­sion in Port-of-Spain on a fra­ter­nal and reg­u­lar ba­sis, and we ex­pect that ei­ther by vis­it there or their vis­it here, we will en­gage.”

Mooni­lal al­so con­firmed that T&T is pur­su­ing par­al­lel re­gion­al en­er­gy dis­cus­sions with Guyana, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to the op­er­a­tions and main­te­nance of its nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGL) plant. He said tech­ni­cal teams from both coun­tries are ex­pect­ed to un­der­take rec­i­p­ro­cal vis­its as dis­cus­sions con­tin­ue.