RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she has no ob­jec­tion to a re­port­ed as­set swap be­tween Chevron and Shell, while con­firm­ing that diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment with Venezuela re­mains ac­tive as Trinidad and To­ba­go pur­sues cross-bor­der en­er­gy op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for a $220 mil­lion Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tel project in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had no is­sue with the deal once it proves ben­e­fi­cial to all par­ties in­volved.

“Once it makes mon­ey, I have no prob­lems with it. If they are hap­py and if the in­vestors are sat­is­fied, I have no dif­fi­cul­ty with it,” she said.

Her com­ments fol­low sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor, where Chevron and Shell have been re­struc­tur­ing as­sets to fo­cus on core op­er­a­tions. The arrange­ment is ex­pect­ed to see Chevron strength­en its po­si­tion in heavy oil pro­duc­tion, while Shell con­sol­i­dates its nat­ur­al gas in­ter­ests—par­tic­u­lar­ly in fields with po­ten­tial links to T&T.

For T&T, the de­vel­op­ments are close­ly tied to on­go­ing ef­forts to se­cure ad­di­tion­al gas sup­plies, as do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion de­clines and de­mand from the petro­chem­i­cal and LNG sec­tors re­mains high.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the coun­try stands to ben­e­fit from con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion with key en­er­gy stake­hold­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly through ex­ist­ing part­ner­ships.

“We look for­ward to work­ing with Shell and bp be­cause they are di­rect­ly in­volved through NGC in the Drag­on and oth­er fields off the coast of Venezuela and Trinidad,” she said.

She con­firmed that diplo­mat­ic ef­forts to ad­vance en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion with Venezuela are con­tin­u­ing, al­though a planned mis­sion to Cara­cas has been de­layed.

“There has been a lit­tle bit of progress. I think they have some things hap­pen­ing, so that mis­sion will not be hap­pen­ing this week. I’ll up­date you as time goes on,” she said.

She stressed that en­gage­ment be­tween both coun­tries re­mains ac­tive at the of­fi­cial lev­el.

“Our for­eign min­istry is in con­tact with the for­eign min­istry of Venezuela. That’s how it works. At the diplo­mat­ic lev­el, they are in con­tact,” she added.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ad­dressed ques­tions about her pre­vi­ous des­ig­na­tion as per­sona non gra­ta by Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that di­a­logue would con­tin­ue.

“I have faith. I have faith in God,” she said.

Ear­li­er this month, Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed that a del­e­ga­tion would trav­el to Venezuela to en­sure T&T se­cures its fair share of gas re­sources in­volv­ing the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), part of broad­er ef­forts to boost rev­enue while main­tain­ing sta­ble diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions.

The off­shore Drag­on gas field—lo­cat­ed in Venezue­lan wa­ters near Trinidad’s north­west coast—re­mains cen­tral to those plans. The project, es­ti­mat­ed to hold be­tween 4 and 4.5 tril­lion cu­bic feet of gas, is ex­pect­ed to sup­ply this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor, with pro­duc­tion tar­get­ed as ear­ly as 2027.

The project is seen as crit­i­cal to ad­dress­ing the coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas short­fall and sus­tain­ing out­put at the At­lantic LNG plant, a key dri­ver of the na­tion­al econ­o­my.