Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was proud of what her team had ac­com­plished dur­ing their re­cent vis­it to the Unit­ed States. She not­ed that eight MOUs had been signed and an­nounced that grant fund­ing of $96 mil­lion had been se­cured from Chi­na, pri­mar­i­ly to ad­dress the na­tion­al short­age of fire ten­ders. The “big” suc­cess, she said, was the re­sus­ci­ta­tion of the Drag­on deal, adding that she was ready to trav­el to Venezuela to lead the Drag­on Gas talks.

Pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments are al­ways wel­come, es­pe­cial­ly as Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has warned cit­i­zens of the need for sac­ri­fice. How­ev­er, it re­mains un­clear what new talks with Venezuela would en­tail. In De­cem­ber 2023, the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that its state oil com­pa­ny, PDVSA, had is­sued a 30-year li­cence to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­vel­op the Drag­on field, with Roy­al Dutch Shell as the op­er­a­tor.

If such a li­cence ex­ists, wouldn’t it al­ready con­tain spe­cif­ic terms and con­di­tions? Are these now to be rene­go­ti­at­ed?

Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters fur­ther is the is­sue of US sanc­tions. In Jan­u­ary 2023, the US Trea­sury De­part­ment’s Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) grant­ed a two-year waiv­er al­low­ing the project to pro­ceed, pro­vid­ed that Venezuela re­ceived no cash pay­ments. That li­cence was re­voked by the Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion—well be­fore its Oc­to­ber 2025 ex­piry date.

Since no new OFAC li­cence has been grant­ed, talk of re­newed ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela seems pre­ma­ture. More­over, US mil­i­tary ac­tions in the re­gion raise ques­tions about whether Venezuela could in­voke a clause to sus­pend or de­lay co­op­er­a­tion.

The re­al­i­ty is that Venezuela, not T&T, is in the dri­ver’s seat. Any at­tempt to restart the project will re­quire the prover­bial mend­ing of fences, giv­en the Prime Min­is­ter’s un­equiv­o­cal sup­port for US mil­i­tary ac­tions against al­leged Venezue­lan drug traf­fick­ers and the sharp, undiplo­mat­ic ex­changes that fol­lowed. Last week, she again voiced sup­port for the US af­ter the de­struc­tion of a fourth Venezue­lan fish­ing ves­sel and its oc­cu­pants. No ev­i­dence has been pre­sent­ed to show that these ves­sels were trans­port­ing co­caine or that their crews were traf­fick­ers. The penal­ty for sus­pi­cion of drug traf­fick­ing is not sum­ma­ry ex­e­cu­tion, and any na­tion would be ag­griev­ed by the killing of its cit­i­zens in such a man­ner.

In light of all this, there is no im­me­di­a­cy in pur­su­ing talks on the Drag­on gas deal with­out clar­i­ty on the con­tents and du­ra­tion of a new OFAC li­cence. The more press­ing pri­or­i­ty lies at home—the up­com­ing bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and Gov­ern­ment’s plan to ad­dress the coun­try’s deep­en­ing fi­nan­cial, so­cial and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

Min­is­ter Im­bert once boast­ed that the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund had over $25 bil­lion in as­sets and was se­cure. How­ev­er, the Eleventh Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­port con­tra­dict­ed that claim, pro­ject­ing that the fund’s as­sets will be ex­haust­ed in just eight years (Fis­cal Year 2033–34). That leaves no time for de­lay. Dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions must be made now.

Sim­i­lar­ly, S&P has not­ed that T&T’s eco­nom­ic growth rate re­mains too low com­pared to coun­tries of sim­i­lar size, while ex­ter­nal re­serves have been in long-term de­cline, and pub­lic fi­nances re­main weak. In plain terms, we have been liv­ing be­yond our means and can­not con­tin­ue fi­nanc­ing re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture through bor­row­ing.

If Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, it must strength­en its in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, and tack­le the for­eign ex­change is­sue con­struc­tive­ly. That re­quires con­fronting re­al­i­ty, not gloss­ing over it. In this con­text, show­cas­ing the Drag­on deal feels less like a break­through and more like an emp­ty ges­ture.