Orin Gor­don

In the US TV se­ries Game of Thrones, a drag­on killed in bat­tle got re­an­i­mat­ed– res­ur­rect­ed–by the war­rior leader who was the en­e­my of the woman who owned and raised him. The Night King, the leader of a hu­manoid army named the White Walk­ers, re­pur­posed the drag­on (Vis­e­ri­on) to de­ploy him in bat­tle against Daen­erys Tar­garyen, who had lov­ing­ly raised him from birth.

From be­ing a weapon formed against him, the Night King trans­formed Vis­e­ri­on in­to one for their cause. There’s a dra­mat­ic mo­ment when the dead drag­on re­opens his eyes and clear­ly trans­fers his loy­al­ties.

The US Trea­sury De­part­ment’s Of­fice of For­eign As­set Con­trol (OFAC), which over­sees eco­nom­ic sanc­tions, ter­mi­nat­ed the li­cence for the Drag­on Gas agree­ment just be­fore T&T’s late April elec­tion. Fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sep­tem­ber 30 in Wash­ing­ton, the US State De­part­ment said that Ru­bio “out­lined US sup­port for the (T&T) Gov­ern­ment’s Drag­on gas pro­pos­al and steps to en­sure it will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime”.

The last part seemed de­signed to pla­cate the do­mes­tic op­po­nents of Nico­las Maduro. Drag­on is all Venezuela’s. It’s like say­ing that a land­lord can­not de­rive eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit from rent­ing a part of his prop­er­ty.

In US pol­i­tics, the Oc­to­ber sur­prise is a po­ten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tive po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment close to their No­vem­ber pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Re­open­ing the arrange­ment in­volv­ing T&T and Venezue­lan state com­pa­nies and Shell, the glob­al en­er­gy gi­ant, was Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Oc­to­ber sur­prise. In op­po­si­tion, they’d spent much time crit­i­cis­ing the same pro­pos­al they were now cham­pi­oning.

“Drag­on gas is dead,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said back in May, short­ly af­ter her elec­toral vic­to­ry. “We would be fool­ish not to look at oth­er places as well.”

They’d sug­gest­ed that T&T should look at oth­er agree­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties with Guyana, Grena­da, and Suri­name. In ear­ly Au­gust, seem­ing­ly in a piv­ot away from Drag­on, T&T and Exxon­Mo­bil fi­nalised terms for the award of sev­en ex­plo­ration blocks off the coun­try’s east coast. The wa­ters are two to three thou­sand me­tres deep. The close­ness of the area to Guyana’s Stabroek block seemed to fill all par­ties with con­fi­dence that ex­plo­ration would lead to pro­duc­tion–even if Exxon­Mo­bil and Guyana took four and a half years.

T&T, with a vast­ly more de­vel­oped en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture than Guyana had at the time, could rea­son­ably ex­pect a short­er time­line than that. Ac­cord­ing to the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go, which nev­er wa­vered in the view that Drag­on was in the coun­try’s vi­tal en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic in­ter­est, “a 2024 study by Hous­ton-based en­er­gy an­a­lyt­ics firm TGS sug­gests that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ul­tra-deep­wa­ter re­serves could hold po­ten­tial com­pa­ra­ble to the Stabroek block”.

Venezuela has been un­der US sanc­tions since 2019. The Drag­on arrange­ment, ini­ti­at­ed by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment and led by for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter and briefly tenured prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, re­quired years of care­ful sal­sa danc­ing with both Cara­cas and Wash­ing­ton. The then op­po­si­tion gave Young a lot of heat for the fre­quen­cy of his trips, his open­ness about the costs, and the wis­dom of the deal it­self.

Some in the gov­ern­ing par­ty’s cau­cus seem salty about Young tak­ing some cred­it for get­ting the ball rolling and call­ing out the Gov­ern­ment for their flip-flop on Drag­on. They should let him take his vic­to­ry lap. He has earned that right. One sea­soned Kam­la watch­er told me that she al­ways held Drag­on close to her chest–ir­re­spec­tive of what she said pub­licly–and her close em­brace of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s south­ern Caribbean mil­i­tary ad­ven­tur­ism was cal­cu­lat­ed to get the US on­side in re­viv­ing Drag­on. It paid off, he told me.

That seems a gen­er­ous read­ing. My own read­ing is that the na­tion­al bud­get, which is to be read to­mor­row, will be an eco­nom­i­cal­ly sober­ing one that will bring lit­tle cheer, and the Gov­ern­ment needs quick wins.

The Trea­sury De­part­ment grant­ed T&T an ini­tial six-month OFAC li­cence–to April 2026–to pur­sue de­vel­op­ment of the project. The T&T Gov­ern­ment ex­pects oth­er stages of li­cens­ing to oc­cur. They want to take cus­tody of a drag­on to which Stu­art Young still feels close. The Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to re­vive T&T’s econ­o­my. To them, Drag­on be­com­ing a po­lit­i­cal weapon against their ri­vals is a bonus.