DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

In a blow to this coun­try’s progress on ma­jor cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas deals with Venezuela, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day an­nounced that the Unit­ed States had re­voked this coun­try’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences which fa­cil­i­tat­ed the de­vel­op­ment of both the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin gas fields.

Young an­nounced Wash­ing­ton’s de­ci­sion dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at White­hall, Port-of-Spain.

The OFAC li­cence for Cocuina-Man­akin was grant­ed on May 31, 2024 and was valid un­til May 31, 2026, while the re­vised li­cence for the Drag­on gas field was grant­ed on Oc­to­ber 17, 2023, and was set to ex­pire on Oc­to­ber 31, 2025.

How­ev­er, Young said the de­ci­sion was un­sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing the first Pres­i­den­tial Or­der from US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump dat­ed March 24, which an­nounced tar­iffs on oil-based prod­ucts from Venezuela. Sev­er­al or­ders fol­lowed.

Nev­er­the­less, Young com­mit­ted to se­cur­ing an au­di­ence with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, who leads for­eign pol­i­cy for Wash­ing­ton with em­pha­sis on Venezuela.

Young re­called that he had a “very good con­ver­sa­tion” with Ru­bio in Ja­maica on March 26, adding “he (Ru­bio) gave an as­sur­ance that they will not seek to harm Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Young fur­ther not­ed that Ru­bio dis­cussed how T&T and the wider Cari­com re­gion stood to ben­e­fit from the en­er­gy deals the Gov­ern­ment had ne­go­ti­at­ed with the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic. The Prime Min­is­ter said Ru­bio made it clear he un­der­stood what was com­mu­ni­cat­ed and pledged to con­tin­ue en­gag­ing with T&T.

Blam­ing this lat­est set­back on shifts in the geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape at the hands of Pres­i­dent Trump, Young said he has been in touch with T&T’s at­tor­neys in Wash­ing­ton and they are hop­ing to make an ap­pli­ca­tion for amend­ments. He not­ed that the cur­rent li­cences are set to wind down by May 27, 2025, which is their win­dow to do so. He al­so re­vealed that he reached out to US Spe­cial En­voy for Latin Amer­i­ca Mauri­cio Claver-Carone, re­quest­ing a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Ru­bio.

“I ex­pect that we will be giv­en an au­di­ence. I ex­pect that we will be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to make our case,” Young said.

With the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic hopes hing­ing on the suc­cess of the en­er­gy deal, Young as­sured Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts will con­tin­ue.

To his de­trac­tors, Young said de­spite this hur­dle he has proven he can suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­ate deals on be­half of T&T.

He al­so sought to give the as­sur­ance that all is not lost.

“Plan B and Plan C and Plan D are al­ready in play,” he said.

He said he brought the news to the pop­u­la­tion be­fore speak­ing with Venezue­lan of­fi­cials as well as BP (which was work­ing on the Cocuina-Man­akin field) and Shell (which had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Drag­on Field).

In May 2024, Young said T&T was al­ready pay­ing an un­stat­ed por­tion of over US$1 mil­lion per year in tax­es to Venezuela for the Drag­on gas field.

Mean­while, the UNC’s shad­ow en­er­gy min­is­ter David Lee said his par­ty would work with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­cen­tivise lo­cal com­pa­nies to pro­duce more gas with­in T&T ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters if it is re­turned to gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing dur­ing a walk­a­bout in Preysal, Lee said Gov­ern­ment had risked it all on the deal.

“You had placed all your eggs in the bas­ket of the Maduro gov­ern­ment in re­spect of drilling for oil and gas  and again we see the sit­u­a­tion, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has pulled those li­cences and this is a set­back for this present ad­min­is­tra­tion. We told them so ... they did not in­cen­tivise our en­er­gy sec­tor over the last 10 years with re­spect to the en­er­gy com­pa­nies that had been in T&T for a num­ber of years.” 

Lee added, “Now there is a set­back, it re­al­ly af­fects the rev­enues that this present PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had pro­ject­ed … there is no boom giv­en what has hap­pened with these OFAC li­cences. We will work with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and their team to see how best they can as­sist us in our oil and gas sec­tor.”

An­a­lysts: Elec­tion tool for UNC

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the re­vo­ca­tion of the li­cences, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath sug­gest­ed that Young may be the sole in­di­vid­ual in T&T who be­lieved the US Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio when he said the US meant no harm to this coun­try.

He said he ex­pects the Op­po­si­tion to use this as a tool in the up­com­ing elec­tion.

“Yes­ter­day (Mon­day), the PNM suf­fered a de­feat in the courts, which was one of the things that it would have been cam­paign­ing on ... is Mr (David) Lee, who is be­fore the courts on charges that have been re­moved. Now we don’t have the OFAC li­cences to go for­ward. So, yes, the UNC is go­ing to use these suc­cess­es or even the fail­ure of Trinidad and To­ba­go in this con­text to their ad­van­tage,” he said.

An­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj agreed with this sen­ti­ment, adding both par­ties now face sig­nif­i­cant stakes in con­vinc­ing the pop­u­lace of their ca­pa­bil­i­ty to dri­ve the na­tion for­ward and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The dis­ci­pline with­in the frame­work of po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the na­tion­al pol­i­tics, the in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics, your lo­cal econ­o­my, and your in­ter­na­tion­al econ­o­my is what is at stake now. It’s a time for se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion, not po­lit­i­cal mau­vaise langue.”

Ram­samooj said this lat­est act by the Unit­ed States proves they are still in com­plete con­trol of the al­lo­ca­tion of the Caribbean’s re­sources. He said the pop­u­la­tion has a lot to con­sid­er head­ing in­to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, not­ing that both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers ought to be ques­tioned about their eco­nom­ic plan for T&T for the next two years.