CARICOM member country Trinidad and Tobago’s acquisition of a licence “to procure and produce natural gas from Venezuela’s Dragon Field has been s one of the high points of the country’s energy sector”, according to the country’s Energy Minister Stuart Young. Young is reported in the January 20 issue of the Sunday Guardian as saying that the future of Trinidad and Tobago, is secured after it had received the ‘green light’ to acquire a license “to procure and produce natural gas from Venezuela’s Dragon gas field and successful onshore/nearshore bid rounds.” The comment comes on the heels of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro referendum seeking to influence the Venezuelan populace to embrace a referendum to revive the claim.
While Young made no secret of the importance of the Dragon gas deal to the fortunes of Trinidad and Tobago energy sector, Trinidad and Tobago, as a member of CARICOM, has long embraced the position that Venezuela’s claim to Essequibo is spurious and without merit. The country’s Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley, is himself on record as saying that his country’s working economic relationship with Venezuela, notwithstanding, Trinidad and Tobago fully supports Guyana in pursuit of the repudiation in the country’s rejection of Venezuela’s territorial claim. At the recent Port of Spain Energy Conference, however, the T&T Energy Minister made no secret of the importance of the Dragon gas project to his country’s energy sector.
Young said that in 2023, things began to come together for the country with the government obtaining a licence in January from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of that country’s Treasury Department to pursue the development of the Venezuelan Dragon gas field, an initiative which Young reportedly said involved “intense and complex negotiations with the Venezuelan government to obtain the licence to develop and export the natural gas in the Dragon field.” The Guardian quotes Young as saying that on December 21 last, the company secured the licence from the Government of Venezuela to “explore, develop and export natural gas from Dragon to Trinidad and Tobago” and that agreement had also been reached on “royalties, and pricing among many terms and conditions.”
The Trinidad and Tobago/Venezuela deal reportedly involves the purchase of natural gas from Venezuela’s Dragon gas field and the transportation of the natural gas to the Hibiscus platform via a 17km pipeline. “The deal is a partnership between T&T’s wholly state-owned National Gas Company, Royal Dutch Shell, and Venezuelan state-owned energy company, PDVSA,” the Guardian report says.
