When I saw the news that Chevron had been giv­en the okay by the US gov­ern­ment to re­sume pump­ing oil from Venezuela to ex­port to the US, I im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan think­ing of the OFAC li­cences that T&T se­cured from the US Trea­sury De­part­ment and which were with­drawn around the same time as Chevron’s. T&T se­cured OFAC li­cences which al­low both Shell and BP to drill for gas in Venezue­lan wa­ters. With the Chevron prece­dent, those li­cences can be re­stored.

The fact that these li­cences were se­cured by the PNM gov­ern­ment does not di­min­ish their val­ue. The fact that it now falls to the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment to pur­sue restora­tion of these li­cences is no em­bar­rass­ment to the UNC Coali­tion of In­ter­ests Gov­ern­ment. In­deed, the restora­tion of T&T’s OFAC li­cences will be a boon for our Gov­ern­ment and a tri­umphant op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T.

For Shell, the li­cence will mean a 30-year op­por­tu­ni­ty to pipe gas from the Drag­on field to NGC and At­lantic LNG. For BP, it in­volves a 20-year lease to re­trieve nat­ur­al gas from the Cocuina field. These con­tracts are with the Gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and in­volve PDVSA. So, a warm-up of re­la­tions be­tween Port-of-Spain and Cara­cas, even as the Trump/Maduro re­la­tion­ship re­mains un­pre­dictable, might be of val­ue.

I would be sur­prised if Shell and BP have not had op­ti­mistic, strate­gic con­ver­sa­tions with each oth­er on this mat­ter re­cent­ly. I would be equal­ly sur­prised if they have not al­ready, en­gaged the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. Dr Mooni­lal might well be tak­ing steps to re­store the OFAC li­cences and cur­rent­ly mak­ing an as­sess­ment of how to get first gas to mar­ket as fast as pos­si­ble. It would be use­ful to have able am­bas­sadors in Cara­cas and Wash­ing­ton at this time.

All the promise of in­creased pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas in lo­cal wa­ters is fine and wel­come. The T&T man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is mak­ing progress, and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is clear­ly on this Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da. But the gap in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion be­tween de­mand and sup­ply will con­tin­ue to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce rev­enue, and en­sure deficit bud­get­ing even if ex­pen­di­ture is re­duced. So, it would be wise to lever­age op­por­tu­ni­ties as they present them­selves to se­cure T&T now and for the medi­um term. The strate­gic task is to build out a fu­ture based on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of non-en­er­gy in­vest­ment, trade, ex­ports and mar­kets and mean­ing­ful in­te­gra­tion in­to the evolv­ing val­ue chain of the glob­al econ­o­my. Non-en­er­gy ex­ports and for­eign ex­change are es­sen­tial to sus­tain our econ­o­my.

So, three im­me­di­ate chal­lenges con­front us: rev­enue, for­eign ex­change and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment seems to be tack­ling mur­ders, crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty by a frontal at­tack on gang or­gan­i­sa­tion with­in the prison sys­tem. Sim­ple ques­tions: Where do the drones come from? Who gets them here? What is the sup­ply chain? And when they get here, what is the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work and how is pay­ment made across the sup­ply chain?

Clear­ly, not all gang­sters are in prison. And gang­sters out­side who sup­port gang­sters in prison must be in­volved in pri­vate busi­ness, gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy or in­di­vid­ual ini­tia­tives that make the sys­tem work. The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er has to sum­mon the in­ves­tiga­tive pow­er res­i­dent among trust­ed of­fi­cials to get to the bot­tom of these things. If we do not pur­sue the in­ter-con­nect­ed val­ue chains of crim­i­nal suc­cess, to re­sults and cor­rec­tive ac­tion, the fail­ure this time will be as big as, or big­ger, than the fail­ure of the last gov­ern­ment on crime.

The so­ci­etal con­se­quences of fail­ure on the crime front are too hor­ri­ble to con­tem­plate. So, fail­ure is not an op­tion. We must get it right this time or else. From the looks of it, we have a good chance with a Prime Min­is­ter with po­lit­i­cal will and re­solve; with two min­is­ters who know the ground and are fa­mil­iar with the le­gal ter­rain and po­lice work; and a com­mis­sion­er who is not afraid to lead and to stand his ground. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is al­so ex­pe­ri­enced in law and in gov­ern­ment. All the in­gre­di­ents for suc­cess are there. This might well be our last chance to pre­vent all hell from break­ing loose.

What stands in the way are the now en­trenched flaws of a long-com­pro­mised sys­tem of law, or­der, in­sti­tu­tions and jus­tice. That sys­tem as a whole, in­sti­tu­tion by in­sti­tu­tion, needs cor­rec­tive in­ter­ven­tion.

The chal­lenge here is the use of law­ful pow­er against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, while guard­ing democ­ra­cy and in­di­vid­ual and hu­man rights for cit­i­zen well-be­ing.