Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has hit back at the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and urged the pop­u­la­tion to turn their at­ten­tion on Op­po­si­tion mem­bers who are bent on the down­fall of the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela.

“I’m ask­ing you to send your tele­path­ic pow­er to over­come this neg­a­tive non­sense about the fail­ure of the Drag­on deal,” he said while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ny for the prac­ti­cal open­ing of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block, again un­der­scor­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the gas project.

His com­ment came a day af­ter Op­po­si­tion shad­ow en­er­gy min­is­ter David Lee called for trans­paren­cy on the deal be­tween the two coun­tries.

“If you see us los­ing that OFAC li­cence, as you will see in the news if it hap­pens, then you know your cou-cou cook. If you see the Venezue­lans not al­low­ing us to use the Drag­on field, then you know we are in dif­fi­cul­ty,” Row­ley said, not­ing that call­ing for the deal to col­lapse was not on­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble but harm­ful to na­tion­al in­ter­est.

“We take too much for grant­ed in this coun­try, that is why we could have peo­ple in this coun­try call­ing for the fail­ure of the Drag­on deal. But I can tell you that they won’t have any prob­lem be­cause they stash away enough, so you who haven’t stashed away any­thing, it is your con­di­tion that they laugh­ing at.”

Since 2023, un­der the then-Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, a li­cence was grant­ed to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to plan and de­vel­op gas projects with Venezuela. Gov­ern­ment has been seek­ing the ex­ten­sion of one of the au­tho­ri­sa­tions so the project can de­liv­er first gas around 2027. How­ev­er, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump last month an­nounced the re­ver­sal of such au­tho­ri­sa­tions.

Dr Row­ley con­tend­ed that the ef­fort and diplo­ma­cy re­quired to se­cure the en­er­gy deal should not be di­min­ished.

“We got, dur­ing a time when the geo pol­i­tics is as such that Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries, which shall re­main name­less, are set­ting new pa­ra­me­ters and new terms of trade, and sanc­tions by one coun­try against an­oth­er coun­try could have the ef­fect of de­stroy­ing our econ­o­my.”

Dr Row­ley cau­tioned about the fall­out of the project, which re­quired com­plex ne­go­ti­a­tions, con­tin­ued fac­ing hur­dles and push­back.

“If you see in the news any of these things go­ing south or sour, do not join oth­er peo­ple to jump up and cel­e­brate it be­cause you know what is go­ing to hap­pen there, our rev­enue stream, doesn’t mat­ter what else we do, our rev­enue steam on the scale that is re­quired to pay teach­ers, to pay nurs­es, doc­tors, to build hos­pi­tals, to pay MPs, to pay who, the rev­enue stream, if what we have done in the last sev­en years was not done, where would Trinidad and To­ba­go be to­day?”