PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher
@guardian.co.tt

A back-up plan should be in place in case the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion im­ple­ments poli­cies than may dis­rupt this coun­try’s gas deals with Venezuela.

This was the view shared by Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce T&T CEO Ni­rad Tewarie at the launch of IDB Tech Lab in St Clair yes­ter­day.

Tewarie said he was ex­pec­tant that the gov­ern­ment would have al­ter­na­tives in place giv­en Trump’s re-elec­tion as Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent and his an­nounce­ment that Mar­co Ru­bio was his can­di­date for sec­re­tary of state. Ru­bio last week de­scribed Venezuela as a nar­co-traf­fick­ing state and crit­i­cised the Pres­i­dent Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion for re­lax­ing cer­tain sanc­tions placed against the South Amer­i­can state.

T&T re­ceived two OFAC li­cens­es in the past 18 months to pur­sue gas pro­duc­tion in Venezue­lan gas fields Drag­on and Cocuina re­spec­tive­ly.

The gas ex­tract­ed from these fields is ex­pect­ed to bol­ster the en­er­gy sec­tor in the next two years

“I think we al­ways should have plans A, B and C, some­times down to D, E and F, so for quite some time, we all have been talk­ing about di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, look­ing at oth­er things that we could do, such as get­ting in­to green and blue hy­dro­gen. So yes, of course we should, but we shouldn’t give up and say just be­cause the ad­min­is­tra­tion has changed, we’re not go­ing to try and get the out­come that we want ei­ther,” said Tewarie, when asked about the pos­si­ble im­pact of the Pres­i­dent Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion on these deals.

He said the gov­ern­ment would have to in­ter­act with the new ad­min­is­tra­tion as well to ex­plore what are the pos­si­bil­i­ties.

“Time will tell, and what we have to do, and what we ex­pect the gov­ern­ment is do­ing, is be­ing proac­tive in terms of en­gag­ing with the ad­min­is­tra­tion, be­cause they’re very dif­fer­ent. There will be dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es to be em­ployed with this ad­min­is­tra­tion than the last. And of course, you al­so have the ef­forts of the com­pa­nies in­volved. So we do have to wait and see, but we all know that the risks of a big change in pol­i­cy are high,” said the Am­cham T&T CEO.

He con­tin­ued, “There are oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties to work to­geth­er on a num­ber of things, whether it be from a se­cu­ri­ty per­spec­tive or in terms of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, that might help to ame­lio­rate some of the is­sues that a sig­nif­i­cant amount of de­por­ta­tions might cause if that were to hap­pen. And so again, it’s just about how we en­gage, how we are strate­gic, how we iden­ti­fy our in­ter­ests, how we work with peo­ple who are in the dif­fer­ent po­si­tions of pow­er and au­thor­i­ty, be­cause the US gov­ern­ment is a huge or­gan­i­sa­tion.”