Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy arrange­ments with Venezuela re­main un­changed de­spite the on­go­ing po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary de­vel­op­ments in that coun­try and the Unit­ed States’ Jan­u­ary 3 in­va­sion, which re­moved Nico­las Maduro from of­fice.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to op­er­ate un­der its ex­ist­ing au­tho­ri­sa­tions and agree­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to the Drag­on gas project, and there has been no in­di­ca­tion that any of these have been can­celled or al­tered.

He said, “To an­swer your ques­tion in a di­rect way, we do have an OFAC li­cence that was ne­go­ti­at­ed, and the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ad­vo­cat­ed very strong­ly in New York and Wash­ing­ton over a pe­ri­od of eight months or so for an OFAC li­cence vis-a-vis the Drag­on­field project. That re­mains in place, and to my knowl­edge, that li­cence is in ef­fect, and work has con­tin­ued pur­suant to the con­di­tions of that li­cence. There has been no change in that.”

Mooni­lal said from an en­er­gy per­spec­tive, the min­istry con­tin­ues to “calm­ly mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments,” while broad­er po­lit­i­cal and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues re­main the re­mit of the Prime Min­is­ter and the min­is­ters re­spon­si­ble for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

He said, “On­go­ing de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela are mat­ters of great con­cern that the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and law en­force­ment min­is­ters, the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Min­is­ter of De­fence, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and so on, re­flect on and will speak to. We in the Min­istry of En­er­gy do not speak to the de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela that are on­go­ing, of course. From the en­er­gy sec­tor per­spec­tive, we calm­ly mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go has so far re­fused to for­mal­ly ac­knowl­edge who it recog­nis­es as the Pres­i­dent of Venezuela, in­stead in­sist­ing that the coun­try main­tains good re­la­tions with the peo­ple of Venezuela while con­tin­u­ing to pur­sue en­er­gy in­ter­ests al­ready un­der­way.

His stance con­trasts with Venezuela’s Oc­to­ber 2025 an­nounce­ment that it had sus­pend­ed en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion with T&T and would move to re­voke ap­provals linked to the Drag­on gas project.

Mooni­lal was asked whether his min­istry has en­gaged or in­tends to en­gage the ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Del­cy Ro­dríguez.

He re­peat­ed­ly de­clined to speak di­rect­ly to po­lit­i­cal en­gage­ment, but in­sist­ed op­er­a­tional work on en­er­gy mat­ters con­tin­ues.

He said, “What I can tell you is that work has con­tin­ued along the lines of the Drag­on­field and oth­er cross-bor­der projects as well. There has been no change on that mat­ter, and we con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor in a calm and re­spon­si­ble way the de­vel­op­ments tak­ing place there. Those de­vel­op­ments, as you know, un­fold as we go along.”

Pressed again on con­tacts with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, he added, “All I can say is all the stake­hold­ers in­volved in those projects con­tin­ue to be en­gaged with the rel­e­vant and par­al­lel rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Venezuela.”

Mooni­lal al­so dis­missed claims that T&T has suf­fered any fi­nan­cial or con­trac­tu­al fall­out from Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion.

He said, “Agree­ments have been in place in this coun­try with Venezuela for some years now. And to our knowl­edge, we have not re­ceived any­thing that sug­gests that any arrange­ment has changed. Of­fi­cial­ly, we have not. We con­tin­ue to work.”

He added, “We sim­ply do not have com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships on that is­sue. What we have had is some agree­ments to ad­vance, par­tic­u­lar­ly on gas field is­sues. And that con­tin­ues. The stake­hold­ers there have been work­ing, and they con­tin­ue to work. So there has been no change in that are­na.”