DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

As glob­al po­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics con­tin­ue to evolve, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj be­lieves the Drag­on gas deal re­mains vi­able but se­cur­ing its fu­ture will re­quire adapt­abil­i­ty and strate­gic lead­er­ship.

“Every day is a po­lit­i­cal roller­coast­er ride, and we must have adapt­abil­i­ty and strate­gic ne­go­ti­a­tions in our lead­er­ship if we wish to se­cure our eco­nom­ic well-be­ing,” Ram­samooj said yes­ter­day.

Amid on­go­ing dis­cus­sions on key en­er­gy agree­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al trade re­la­tions, he stressed that suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions de­mand a strong un­der­stand­ing of glob­al po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en shifts in the Unit­ed States un­der Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The ne­go­ti­a­tions are an on­go­ing mat­ter. It re­quires skillsets of lead­ers to un­der­stand the po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties in the Unit­ed States of Don­ald Trump’s gov­ern­ment and how to ma­noeu­vre best to look af­ter our in­ter­ests. Noth­ing is dead when it comes to glob­al strate­gic re­la­tion­ships. It is tim­ing,” he ex­plained.

“If we look at what’s hap­pen­ing be­tween (Vladimir) Putin and be­tween Ukraine, all our ne­go­ti­a­tions are in a state of flux,” he added.

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Maukesh Bas­deo warned that fail­ure to se­cure the Drag­on gas deal could have sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for Trinidad and To­ba­go. He ex­pects En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to pri­ori­tise the is­sue as he tran­si­tions in­to na­tion­al lead­er­ship.

“So, he (Young) would re­quire some time to see how to get around this be­cause you re­call that last year in the bud­get, Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley did in­di­cate to us that the coun­try may ex­pe­ri­ence some fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties up un­til 2027. And he said that those dif­fi­cul­ties can be re­moved with the ad­vent of the flow of Drag­on gas to our oil and gas fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad. He ex­pect­ed that the project should be com­plet­ed and first gas by 2027. This is up in the air for dis­cus­sion, how is that go­ing to be ma­te­ri­alised?”

He al­so high­light­ed the need for en­gage­ment with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, em­pha­sis­ing that se­cur­ing con­ces­sions could be cru­cial for the fu­ture of the project.

“So, will Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, cur­rent and or prime min­is­ter Young, what are their plans to en­gage the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion? Put any sort of con­ces­sions on it? That’s an­oth­er is­sue that will im­me­di­ate­ly be put on the front burn­er for act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Young as he goes in­to of­fice.”