A late-night Tweet by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on Wednes­day was enough to dri­ve fear in­to the hearts and minds of Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans, who are pen­ning any hopes on the Drag­on Gas deal with Venezuela—not least of all act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who ad­mit­ted to re­porters yes­ter­day that he was quite con­cerned about the US gov­ern­ment’s lat­est ar­tic­u­lat­ed po­si­tion.

“It is un­der­stood by many lev­els how im­por­tant this deal [is] … not on­ly for the en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, but al­so the sta­bil­i­ty of the re­gion, Cari­com, as well as South Amer­i­ca, and al­so the con­ver­sa­tions we’ve con­sis­tent­ly had with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, how it al­so af­fects the geopol­i­tics, not on­ly of the re­gion, but al­so as far away as Eu­rope, as well as some oth­er en­ti­ties,” Young said.

He was re­act­ing to Ru­bio’s Tweet which was in keep­ing with the po­lit­i­cal rhetoric be­ing spewed by the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion against the Nico­las Maduro gov­ern­ment in Cara­cas.

Pur­suant to a di­rec­tive is­sued by Trump him­self, Ru­bio said: “I am pro­vid­ing for­eign pol­i­cy guid­ance to ter­mi­nate all Biden-era oil and gas li­cences that have shame­ful­ly bankrolled the il­le­git­i­mate Maduro regime.”

It is a de­ci­sion that stands to af­fect the li­cence grant­ed for Venezue­lan oil to be processed in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the agree­ment be­tween the neigh­bour­ing states to co-op­er­ate in their mu­tu­al eco­nom­ic in­ter­est.

This would amount to a lost op­por­tu­ni­ty for a mea­sure of re­vival of the en­er­gy sec­tor here and could se­ri­ous­ly re­tard the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a restora­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

For cer­tain, in the short to medi­um term, jobs would be lost in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors and the hope for the re­cov­ery of for­eign ex­change in­flows through in­vest­ment and in­creased func­tion­ing of the en­er­gy sec­tor would be doomed.

The ef­fects of such a pos­si­ble out­come would run through the econ­o­my, im­pact in­vestor con­fi­dence and lead to fur­ther dry­ing up of op­tions for eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, which the oil and gas deals were sup­posed to at least get off the ground in the medi­um term. So­cial ag­gra­va­tion and protest ac­tion could fol­low if this is the out­come if the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in­ten­si­fies its cur­rent cam­paign.

The most en­fee­bling out­come of Trump’s de­ci­sion to halt the two-na­tion agree­ment is that Trinidad and To­ba­go can do lit­tle but ap­peal to the US Pres­i­dent for mer­cy on a Caribbean neigh­bour friend­ly to the US and with his­tor­i­cal links. Whether such a diplo­mat­ic over­ture can pre­vail over Trump’s in­tent to re­move Pres­i­dent Maduro, who the US leader be­lieves is il­le­gal­ly in of­fice and who de­fied him dur­ing his (Trump’s) first term of of­fice, is a re­al long shot.

But be­fore pan­ic sets in ful­ly, the Gov­ern­ment needs to know for cer­tain how the de­ci­sion will im­pact or not when the el­e­ments are made clear to the Gov­ern­ment here.

What can­not be en­ter­tained in the na­tion­al in­ter­est are calls for the US to re­move every el­e­ment of the deal to com­plete­ly nul­li­fy the agreed-up­on en­er­gy co-op­er­a­tion deal through nar­row pol­i­tick­ing.

Drag­on is crit­i­cal to T&T’s eco­nom­ic sur­vival no mat­ter which par­ty takes charge af­ter the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions, but giv­en Trump’s cur­rent pos­ture, hopes of a deal are quick­ly wan­ing.