At the 2025 T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, then Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed that T&T, is “seek­ing to de­lin­eate the out­er lim­its of the coun­try’s con­ti­nen­tal shelf, be­yond 200 nau­ti­cal miles”, with the prac­ti­cal ob­jec­tive of be­ing “in a po­si­tion to ex­ploit the nat­ur­al re­sources” on that ex­tend­ed por­tion. The state­ment crys­tallised a strate­gic ini­tia­tive that has been qui­et­ly ad­vanc­ing through Unit­ed Na­tions process­es since 2009, but which now car­ries im­pli­ca­tions far be­yond the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of seabed ju­ris­dic­tion.

The fact that there has been lit­tle dis­cus­sion around this is­sue es­pe­cial­ly from all the me­dia columns and analy­sis around our coun­try’s cur­rent po­si­tion re­gard­ing Venezuela is telling. What fol­lows is my un­der­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion in con­text.

What T&T seeks is sub­stan­tial. Un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea, coastal states may claim sov­er­eign rights over their con­ti­nen­tal shelf where ge­o­log­i­cal ev­i­dence demon­strates the seabed is a nat­ur­al pro­lon­ga­tion of their land ter­ri­to­ry ex­tend­ing be­yond the stan­dard 200 nau­ti­cal mile ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone.

T&T’s amend­ed sub­mis­sion to the Com­mis­sion on the Lim­its of the Con­ti­nen­tal Shelf, filed in April 2023 and su­per­sed­ing an ear­li­er 2009 ap­pli­ca­tion, tar­gets an area in the At­lantic Ocean to our east and north­east. If ap­proved, this would ex­tend our seabed ju­ris­dic­tion po­ten­tial­ly to 350 nau­ti­cal miles from its base­lines at the fur­thest points, adding an es­ti­mat­ed 25,000 square kilo­me­tres of seabed ter­ri­to­ry, rough­ly one-third more than the ex­ist­ing EEZ en­com­pass­es.

This ex­tend­ed zone lies along the same ge­o­log­i­cal trend that has proven spec­tac­u­lar­ly pro­lif­ic with hy­dro­car­bons fur­ther south. The Cre­ta­ceous-age source rocks that have yield­ed over 11 bil­lion bar­rels of dis­cov­ered oil in Guyana’s Stabroek Block are be­lieved to ex­tend north­west­ward un­der Trinidad’s ul­tra-deep wa­ters. Ge­o­log­i­cal in­ter­preters see signs that the Guyana trend con­tin­ues in­to Trinidad’s far off­shore, sug­gest­ing the same pe­tro­le­um sys­tem that trans­formed Guyana’s for­tunes could ex­ist be­neath wa­ters T&T now seeks to claim.

This is not mere spec­u­la­tion. With­in the ex­ist­ing 200 nau­ti­cal mile zone, deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration has al­ready demon­strat­ed a work­ing pe­tro­le­um sys­tem. Wood­side En­er­gy’s Le Clerc dis­cov­ery in 2017 holds an es­ti­mat­ed five tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas. The Ca­lyp­so Project, com­pris­ing mul­ti­ple fields dis­cov­ered be­tween 2018 and 2019, adds an­oth­er 3.5 tril­lion cu­bic feet. These finds val­i­date the con­cept; the ex­tend­ed shelf rep­re­sents the next ge­o­log­i­cal fron­tier.

The cur­rent com­mer­cial log­ic found its most em­phat­ic ex­pres­sion in Au­gust 2025, when T&T ex­e­cut­ed a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract with Exxon­Mo­bil for the Ul­tra-Deep 1 block, a 7,165 square kilo­me­tre acreage con­sol­i­dat­ing sev­en pre­vi­ous­ly un­li­censed deep­wa­ter blocks in wa­ter depths of 2,000 to 3,000 me­tres. The award, made out­side the com­pet­i­tive bid round through di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tion, marked Exxon­Mo­bil’s re­turn to Trinidad af­ter two decades away. The com­pa­ny’s ex­plic­it ra­tio­nale was the ge­o­log­i­cal anal­o­gy to Stabroek, where it has built one of the most valu­able off­shore port­fo­lios in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Ul­tra-Deep 1 lies ap­prox­i­mate­ly 190 miles off­shore, plac­ing it with­in our ex­ist­ing EEZ rather than in the ex­tend­ed shelf zone Trinidad seeks to se­cure. This dis­tinc­tion mat­ters. The block sits near the mar­itime bound­ary with Venezuela, north­west of Stabroek, in wa­ters al­ready un­der Trinidad and To­ba­go’s undis­put­ed ju­ris­dic­tion. The ex­tend­ed con­ti­nen­tal shelf claim cov­ers seabed fur­ther out in the At­lantic, be­yond where Exxon­Mo­bil will op­er­ate. Yet the two ini­tia­tives are strate­gi­cal­ly linked: suc­cess in Ul­tra-Deep 1 would val­i­date the ge­o­log­i­cal mod­el that makes the ex­tend­ed shelf so at­trac­tive, while se­cur­ing the ex­tend­ed shelf would po­si­tion T&T to of­fer ad­di­tion­al fron­tier acreage to ma­jor op­er­a­tors seek­ing to repli­cate Guyana’s suc­cess.

Venezuela

Venezuela’s re­sponse to T&T’s amend­ed sub­mis­sion has nev­er been dis­cussed in T&T.

In Ju­ly 2023, Cara­cas lodged a for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tions ex­press­ing “sur­prise and con­cern” that it had not been con­sult­ed. The Venezue­lan ob­jec­tion rests on three pil­lars: a pro­ce­dur­al protest re­gard­ing con­sul­ta­tion, a sub­stan­tive as­ser­tion that the At­lantic con­ti­nen­tal shelf space in­volves over­lap­ping en­ti­tle­ments where mul­ti­ple coastal pro­jec­tions con­verge, and a le­gal pos­ture ground­ed in Venezuela’s sta­tus as a non-par­ty to UN­C­LOS, pre­fer­ring to as­sert claims un­der cus­tom­ary in­ter­na­tion­al law rather than treaty process­es.

The Com­mis­sion on the Lim­its of the Con­ti­nen­tal Shelf, which eval­u­ates the sci­en­tif­ic mer­its of such sub­mis­sions but does not ad­ju­di­cate bound­ary dis­putes, has sus­pend­ed con­sid­er­a­tion of T&T’s claim pend­ing res­o­lu­tion of the over­lap. This is stan­dard pro­ce­dure. Yet Venezuela’s ob­jec­tion can­not be un­der­stood in iso­la­tion from its broad­er At­lantic strat­e­gy.

Un­der the Maduro regime, Venezuela has main­tained a cod­i­fied pol­i­cy ar­chi­tec­ture for what it terms the “Facha­da Atlán­ti­ca”, the At­lantic Façade. De­cree 4.415 es­tab­lish­es a strate­gic de­vel­op­ment zone pro­ject­ed from the Orinoco Delta to­ward the At­lantic, ex­plic­it­ly ex­tend­ing to the out­er edge of the con­ti­nen­tal mar­gin wher­ev­er it ex­ceeds 200 nau­ti­cal miles. The de­cree cre­ates ad­min­is­tra­tive au­thor­i­ty, pro­vides for co­or­di­na­tion with the armed forces on se­cu­ri­ty plan­ning, and sig­nals Venezuela’s in­tent to treat this At­lantic-fac­ing mar­itime space as a zone of vi­tal na­tion­al in­ter­est. While the de­cree con­tains lim­it­ing lan­guage about not af­fect­ing oth­er states’ de­lim­i­tat­ed spaces, its ex­is­tence demon­strates that Cara­cas views At­lantic seabed ju­ris­dic­tion as strate­gi­cal­ly con­se­quen­tial.

The con­nec­tion to Venezuela’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute with Guyana over the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion adds an­oth­er di­men­sion. In 2015, De­cree 1.787 ex­plic­it­ly linked Venezuela’s At­lantic mar­itime am­bi­tions to its long­stand­ing claim over west­ern Guyana, fram­ing the quest for a “sal­i­da al Atlán­ti­co”, an out­let to the At­lantic, as cen­tral to Venezue­lan strat­e­gy. Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment dis­cussed that de­cree in de­tail, urg­ing Cara­cas to with­draw el­e­ments that ap­plied to the mar­itime space of mem­ber states. The pat­tern is clear: in Venezue­lan strate­gic think­ing, At­lantic-fac­ing mar­itime space and the Es­se­qui­bo con­tro­ver­sy are an­a­lyt­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed.

Shift

This con­text il­lu­mi­nates why Venezuela would ob­ject to T&T’s ex­tend­ed shelf sub­mis­sion even though the 2023 com­mu­ni­ca­tion does not ex­plic­it­ly in­voke the Es­se­qui­bo claim. Any in­ter­na­tion­al process that could con­sol­i­date third par­ty seabed en­ti­tle­ments in At­lantic pro­jec­tion space that Venezuela views as strate­gi­cal­ly vi­tal would at­tract Cara­cas’s at­ten­tion. T&T’s claim, like Guyana’s off­shore suc­cess, rep­re­sents a po­ten­tial fore­clo­sure of Venezue­lan op­tions in wa­ters it con­sid­ers part of its nat­ur­al sphere.

The 1990 de­lim­i­ta­tion treaty be­tween T&T and Venezuela pro­vides the le­gal an­chor, but al­so the com­pli­ca­tion. That treaty es­tab­lished bound­aries with re­spect to ter­ri­to­r­i­al seas, con­ti­nen­tal shelves, and ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zones, plac­ing T&T to the south of the line and Venezuela to the north in the At­lantic sec­tor.

Crit­i­cal­ly, it re­served the right of both par­ties to es­tab­lish and ne­go­ti­ate their re­spec­tive rights if the out­er edge of the con­ti­nen­tal mar­gin ex­tends be­yond 350 nau­ti­cal miles, and ex­plic­it­ly safe­guard­ed the rights of third par­ties. This reser­va­tion means the 1990 agree­ment does not pre­clude fur­ther ne­go­ti­a­tions over ex­tend­ed shelf en­ti­tle­ments, nor does it al­low ei­ther par­ty to lock in al­lo­ca­tions against third states through uni­lat­er­al ac­tion.

The strate­gic cal­cu­lus shifts when one con­sid­ers cur­rent Amer­i­can en­gage­ment in the re­gion. The cap­ture and ar­rest of Nicholas Maduro have cre­at­ed new dy­nam­ics. While there is much con­ver­sa­tion about re­con­struc­tion of en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture in Venezuela and even the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a Drag­on Gas deal, there is al­so the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Cara­cas now has an “in­cen­tive” to re­cal­i­brate its re­gion­al pos­ture. Venezuela may find the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis of sus­tain­ing ob­jec­tions to T&T’s con­ti­nen­tal shelf claim less favourable than it ap­peared in 2023.

For T&T, the con­ver­gence of ge­o­log­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty and geopo­lit­i­cal flux cre­ates both promise and un­cer­tain­ty. Our prospec­tive hy­dro­car­bon re­sources are es­ti­mat­ed at 3.2 bil­lion bar­rels of oil and over 58 tril­lion cu­bic feet of gas across all zones, with deep­wa­ter and ex­tend­ed shelf ar­eas con­sti­tut­ing a ma­jor por­tion of that po­ten­tial. If Exxon­Mo­bil’s ex­plo­ration in Ul­tra-Deep 1 proves suc­cess­ful, and if the con­ti­nen­tal shelf claim can be ad­vanced through diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment with Venezuela, T&T would pos­sess both the proven pe­tro­le­um sys­tem and the ju­ris­dic­tion­al reach to at­tract sus­tained ma­jor in­vest­ment in fron­tier ex­plo­ration.

The me­chan­ics of res­o­lu­tion re­main un­clear. Un­der UN­C­LOS, re­sources on the ex­tend­ed con­ti­nen­tal shelf be­long to the claimant state; if un­claimed, they fall un­der the com­mon her­itage of mankind ad­min­is­tered by the In­ter­na­tion­al Seabed Au­thor­i­ty. Trinidad and To­ba­go there­fore has every in­cen­tive to press its case. Venezuela must weigh the costs of sus­tained op­po­si­tion against the strate­gic val­ue of main­tain­ing its po­si­tion.

The com­ing years will de­ter­mine whether this po­ten­tial ma­te­ri­alis­es. The At­lantic stakes are high, and the win­dow for se­cur­ing them may be de­fined as much by shifts in Cara­cas as by di­rec­tives com­ing out of Wash­ing­ton. Out of this can very well emerge the re­al Zone of Peace.

Ian Nar­ine is a fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant with the en­er­gy to go deep in­to the wa­ters of re­gion­al geopol­i­tics. Please send your com­ments to ian@ian­nar­ine.com