Venezuela gives Russia control of new gas deposits near T&T – report

By Stabroek News On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
Russian president Vladimir Putin (left) and Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
Russian president Vladimir Putin (left) and Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

(Trinidad Guardian) A re­port car­ried by a pan-Latin Amer­i­can news or­gan­i­sa­tion, Panam Post, is stat­ing that Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has giv­en Rus­sia two gas de­posits near to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The re­port says that Maduro of­fered up 100% of the project and all gas rights ex­ploit­ed.

The ar­ti­cle says this is fur­ther ev­i­dence that Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin is chal­leng­ing the US gov­ern­ment in the re­gion, and re­in­forc­ing his plans to stay in the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, Putin ap­proved the plans on Thurs­day, June 13, where­by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment-con­trolled Ros­neft com­pa­ny will en­joy the op­tion to ex­port all the gas ex­tract­ed in both de­posits.

These are the Patao and Mejil­lones de­posits, lo­cat­ed to the north of the Paria penin­su­la and which are part of the Mariscal Su­cre Project, in north­east­ern Venezuela, close to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ros­neft al­ready par­tic­i­pates as a mi­nor­i­ty part­ner in sev­er­al joint oil pro­duc­tion projects in Venezuela, such as Petro­vic­to­ria, Petromon­a­gas and Petro­mi­ran­da, in the Orinoco oil belt, as well as Bo­querón and Petroper­i­já, in the state of Zu­lia.

In March of this year, Nicolás Maduro de­cid­ed to move the Petroleos de Venezuela of­fice from Lis­bon to Moscow to strength­en the strate­gic part­ner­ship be­tween the two coun­tries.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, on Thurs­day, the Venezue­lan for­eign min­is­ter an­nounced that Nicolás Maduro will be pay­ing a vis­it to Moscow.

Rus­sia has be­come one of Maduro’s great­est al­lies, pro­vid­ing it with weapons, tech­nol­o­gy, and oth­er re­sources.

The Russ­ian oil com­pa­ny Ros­neft has chan­neled more than USD $17 bil­lion in loans to the Chavez regime dur­ing the last decade.

The com­pa­ny al­so ex­tract­ed three mil­lion tons of oil in 2017 from its op­er­a­tions in Venezuela.

In gen­er­al, Rus­sia has in­vest­ed in many Venezue­lan in­dus­tries, from bank­ing to bus as­sem­bly.