On Saturday, August 25, 2018, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, signed the terms for the development of a cross-border gas pipeline from the Venezuelan Dragon gas field.

At the signing ceremony, Rowley said this historic deal will allow Venezuelan gas to be monetised on the international market for the benefit of the people of Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, and that this model of co-operation holds out promise for further agreements in other areas. Maduro said he believes there is room for the development of robust bilateral trade between our two countries. He said this deal was proof of Venezuela’s willingness to engage with other nations.

According to the Global Energy Monitor, in mid-2022, Trinidad and Tobago applied to the US Treasury Department for the right to sidestep US sanctions and negotiate with Venezuela for commercial development of the Dragon field, in the name of promoting regional energy security and reducing economic dependence on Russia.

In January, the Treasury Department issued a two-year licence, allowing T&T to cut a gas extraction deal with Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, provided no cash payments were made to the Venezuelan government or state-owned enterprises. In January, at a news conference, Rowley indicated that his Government hoped to import 350 million cubic feet of gas per day by pipeline from the Dragon field. The Venezuelan gas would help supplement the country’s reduced domestic gas reserves and allow full resumption of exports at Trinidad’s partially idled Atlantic Energy terminal.

Negotiations between Venezuela and T&T began in March and continued over the next several months. Offshore Technology’s website said the imported natural gas will contribute to T&T’s strategy to mitigate the supply curtailments to its gas-based industries, including the liquefaction plant operated by BP and Shell, as well as its several petrochemical plants. The Dragon field, along with Patao, Mejillones and Rio Caribe fields, is located in the Mariscal Sucre Complex area, north of the Paria peninsula in offshore Venezuela.

On September 20, all the hard work by Rowley and Minister of Energy and Energy Industries Stuart Young paid off as the historic signing of this agreement was completed. The president of Venezuela said the project to work the Dragon field in Venezuelan waters and start production between Venezuela and T&T will bring gas to the world, and is a message of peace, complementarity, co-operation, solidarity, exercised and shared sovereignty for the entire Caribbean, and is extraordinary.

Kudos to the Prime Minister, to our Minister of Energy and their support team who never gave up and pursued this essential and critical arrangement for the development of not only T&T but the entire Caribbean and the world at large.

Nigel Seenathsingh