Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is re­ject­ing Venezuela’s claims that T&T was com­plic­it in the seizure of an oil ves­sel trans­port­ing Venezuela’s oil last week and he is ask­ing its gov­ern­ment to di­rect all their com­plaints to the US gov­ern­ment.

Mooni­lal made the com­ment in a What­sApp voice note yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian me­dia af­ter the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment an­nounced it had ter­mi­nat­ed all nat­ur­al gas con­tracts with T&T.

The an­nounce­ment seemed to be a re­sponse to the US mil­i­tary’s seizure last week of the oil tanker “Skip­per” off Venezuela’s coast, which the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment de­nounced.

“I have tak­en note of a state­ment pur­port­ed­ly is­sued by the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela. The Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties should di­rect their com­plaints to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, as it is the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary that has seized the sanc­tioned oil tanker. In the mean­while, we con­tin­ue to have peace­ful and fra­ter­nal re­la­tions with the peo­ple of Venezuela,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal al­so called the Venezue­lan state­ment “pro­pa­gan­da.

“We have nev­er de­pend­ed on Venezuela for nat­ur­al gas sup­plies, we have ad­e­quate re­serves with­in our ter­ri­to­ry. We are ag­gres­sive­ly work­ing to re­duce bu­reau­crat­ic bar­ri­ers so that we can speed up ap­provals and li­cences and so on for the en­er­gy com­pa­nies,” he said.

“We are not both­ered by this press re­lease. I find it an act of hypocrisy, since the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela con­tin­ues to en­gage with the USA and it is Chevron that is ex­port­ing heavy crude oil to the re­fin­ers on the US Gulf coast. So, they con­tin­ue to do busi­ness in the oil in­dus­try with the Unit­ed States but then make these er­ro­neous state­ments about T&T.”

The Venezuela gov­ern­ment is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day, al­leg­ing that T&T’s Gov­ern­ment act­ed in col­lu­sion with the US ad­min­is­tra­tion in an act of “pira­cy” that re­sult­ed in the theft of Venezue­lan oil.

Venezuela Vice Pres­i­dent and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Del­cy Ro­dríguez is­sued the state­ment on her In­sta­gram page.

In im­me­di­ate re­sponse to this “es­ca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties and se­ri­ous ag­gres­sions,” Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro al­so made the de­ci­sion to im­me­di­ate­ly ter­mi­nate any ex­ist­ing con­tract, agree­ment, or ne­go­ti­a­tion for the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas to T&T.

In the state­ment, Venezuela said it has “full knowl­edge” of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the theft of Venezue­lan oil com­mit­ted on De­cem­ber 10 by the US ad­min­is­tra­tion through the as­sault on a ship trans­port­ing the strate­gic prod­uct.

The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment de­scribed this in­ci­dent as “a se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law and a clear trans­gres­sion of the prin­ci­ples of free nav­i­ga­tion and trade.”

The state­ment al­so di­rect­ly points to the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as hav­ing “re­vealed a hos­tile agen­da against Venezuela since her ar­rival in Gov­ern­ment.”

Among the ac­tions de­nounced was the “in­stal­la­tion of US mil­i­tary radars” in Trinidad and To­ba­go to ha­rass Venezue­lan ships. Venezuela said it con­sid­ers that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has turned T&T in­to a “US air­craft car­ri­er to at­tack Venezuela, in an un­equiv­o­cal act of vas­salage.”

Pres­i­dent Maduro pro­ceed­ed to de­nounce the En­er­gy Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment pre­vi­ous­ly signed with T&T.

Faced with this “very se­ri­ous act that aims to bla­tant­ly steal Venezuela’s oil,” Maduro said his gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to sev­er en­er­gy ties with T&T.

The state­ment con­clud­ed: “Venezuela de­mands re­spect! And it will not al­low any colo­nial en­ti­ty and its vas­sals to threat­en the sa­cred sov­er­eign­ty of the coun­try and its right to de­vel­op­ment. Venezuela will al­ways pre­vail.”

In re­sponse to a What­sApp mes­sage from Guardian Me­dia, for­mer prime min­is­ter and en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young said he was “very con­cerned” by T&T’s and Venezuela’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing re­la­tion­ship and warned it could hurt the fu­ture of pos­si­ble en­er­gy projects.

“I am very con­cerned about these lat­est de­vel­op­ments and, in par­tic­u­lar, what the im­pli­ca­tions may be for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor. The ob­vi­ous ques­tion that aris­es is, does this mean a can­cel­la­tion of the de­u­ni­ti­za­tion agree­ment for Lo­ran-Man­a­tee and con­se­quen­tial­ly the de­vel­op­ment of Man­a­tee by Shell?”

Young added that T&T is cur­rent­ly fac­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges and in­stead of solv­ing prob­lems, the Gov­ern­ment is “de­stroy­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

“We are not in a good place as a coun­try and this is yet an­oth­er se­ri­ous cause of con­cern,” Young said.

“Add to this the clo­sure of Nu­trien and the wor­ry­ing fact that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) has not ne­go­ti­at­ed any new gas sales con­tracts with down­stream­ers and it is clear the gov­ern­ment is out of its depth and de­stroy­ing our en­er­gy sec­tor.”