On Tues­day, fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, the US State De­part­ment is­sued a state­ment in which Ru­bio out­lined 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 first part of Mr Ru­bio's com­ment, out­lin­ing US sup­port of Drag­on gas, has been wel­comed by sev­er­al busi­ness groups in T&T.

The lat­ter half of Mr Ru­bio's com­ment can be in­ter­pret­ed as the US sup­port­ing steps to en­sure that what­ev­er de­vel­op­ment oc­curs with the Drag­on gas field does not pro­vide "sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit" to Nico­las Maduro's ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Al­though the time has been short, most of the com­men­tary on this is­sue has been on the first clause of Ru­bio's state­ment, while the sec­ond clause has been al­most ig­nored.

On its face, the sug­ges­tion by Ru­bio that the Maduro regime is not en­ti­tled to "sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit" from the deal rais­es trou­bling is­sues. These in­clude who de­ter­mines what con­sti­tutes a "sig­nif­i­cant" ben­e­fit and what the ben­e­fit for Venezuela would be, com­pared to those that oth­er en­ti­ties, such as T&T's Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and multi­na­tion­al project part­ner Shell, would de­rive.

The fact is that the Drag­on gas field is lo­cat­ed en­tire­ly on the Venezue­lan side of its mar­itime bor­der with T&T. As the own­er of the re­source, Maduro's gov­ern­ment, on be­half of its peo­ple, is en­ti­tled to ben­e­fit, ir­re­spec­tive of who­ev­er oc­cu­pies the Mi­raflo­res Palace, the seat of the South Amer­i­can na­tion's gov­ern­ment. No sov­er­eign coun­try would al­low its de­plet­ing nat­ur­al re­source to be ex­ploit­ed if it does not re­ceive the ap­pro­pri­ate ne­go­ti­at­ed ben­e­fit.

The three part­ners in the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on gas field must feel they have been down this road be­fore.

In Jan­u­ary 2023, the US De­part­ment of Trea­sury grant­ed T&T a waiv­er from the US sanc­tions on Venezuela to de­vel­op the Drag­on field. That first li­cence stip­u­lat­ed that Venezuela should re­ceive no pay­ment of US dol­lars for its nat­ur­al gas.

The amend­ment to the first li­cence, grant­ed in Oc­to­ber 2023, al­lowed pay­ments to be made to Venezuela, in­clud­ing, tax­es, roy­al­ties, fees and lease bonus pay­ments in any fi­at cur­ren­cy, in­clud­ing US dol­lars or bo­li­vars.

And in De­cem­ber 2023, NGC, Shell and the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment signed the 30-year Drag­on Field ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cence, which out­lines reg­u­lar pay­ments to the own­er of the re­source. If the US de­ter­mines that that li­cence pro­vides "sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits" to Venezuela, there would be lit­tle chance of an­oth­er OFAC ex­emp­tion.

The sec­ond hur­dle the Drag­on de­vel­op­ment faces is that some of the com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in seek­ing to sup­port the US mil­i­tary at­tacks on pirogues in the Caribbean Sea, have been un­nec­es­sar­i­ly bel­li­cose and hos­tile to the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion. Walk­ing back those com­ments be­cause T&T is seek­ing to re­ac­ti­vate dis­cus­sions on the Drag­on field is not like­ly to fare well in Cara­cas.

But in sug­gest­ing that the Drag­on de­vel­op­ment must not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime, is Mr Ru­bio sig­nalling that if a pro-Amer­i­can pres­i­dent were to oc­cu­py Mi­raflo­res Palace, Drag­on would re­ceive both a green light and a fast track?

Giv­en the lack of any ev­i­dence of mas­sive amounts of il­le­gal nar­cotics be­ing trans­port­ed out of Venezuela to the US, many in the Caribbean are be­gin­ning to won­der about the re­al mo­tives for the US ac­tiv­i­ty in this re­gion.