Trinidad National Security Minister meets Maduro

(Trinidad Guardian) Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Minister and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, yes­ter­day met with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro in Cara­cas for dis­cus­sions on mat­ters of en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed the vis­it via a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day evening.

It said Young vis­it­ed Cara­cas, Venezuela dur­ing the day to dis­cuss mat­ters of in­ter­est to the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela and the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Min­is­ter Young met with Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez, Min­is­ter for In­ter­nal Re­la­tions, Jus­tice and Peace, Nestor Reverol, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Manuel Queve­do, Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, Jorge Ar­reaza and Vice Min­is­ter for the Caribbean/Am­bas­sador to Cari­com, Raúl Li­Causi,” the state­ment said.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­tin­ued to recog­nise Maduro as Venezuela’s pres­i­dent, de­spite many coun­tries, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, recog­nis­ing the head ofthe Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, Juan Guaidó in­stead.

Trinidad and To­ba­go have been in dis­cus­sions with Venezuela over the Drag­on Field be­tween the two coun­tries.

On Au­gust 27, 2018, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Maduro signed an agree­ment in Cara­cas that will al­low the is­land to ac­cess gas from the Drag­on Field.

Row­ley had told the me­dia then, “We may have been able to save our in­dus­try by get­ting a se­cure source of gas for the down­stream sec­tor. It may over time al­so al­low us to look at the ex­pan­sion of the down­stream sec­tor and in­vest­ments there, as long as we can show in­vestors we have a se­cured stream of gas.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was not will­ing at the time to dis­close the price of the gas, point­ing to com­mer­cial con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, but he re­vealed it will be 150 mil­li­on stan­dard cu­bic feet per day (mm­scf/d), with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of it in­creas­ing to 300 mm­scf/d.

The pipeline car­ry­ing the gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Gas field in East­ern Venezuela to Shell’s Hi­bis­cus plat­form off the North Coast will be built and owned in a joint ven­ture be­tween the NGC and Shell Trinidad. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of the con­struc­tion of the pipeline is close to TT $1 bil­li­on.