Raphael John-Lall

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s push to un­lock long-stalled cross-bor­der en­er­gy projects with Venezuela faces sig­nif­i­cant geopo­lit­i­cal and com­mer­cial hur­dles, de­spite re­newed diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment be­tween the two coun­tries.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Dr Ein­stein Mil­lán Ar­cia—a promi­nent for­mer PDVSA con­sul­tant and Venezue­lan en­er­gy an­a­lyst who holds a PhD from Ok­la­homa Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States—out­lined the risks and com­plex­i­ties sur­round­ing ef­forts to op­er­a­tionalise joint oil and gas de­vel­op­ments.

From 2016 to 2017, he served as a per­son­al ad­vis­er to for­mer Venezue­lan oil min­is­ter Nel­son Martínez and cur­rent­ly un­der­takes con­sul­tan­cy work across the Mid­dle East and Africa.

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that a del­e­ga­tion from Trinidad and To­ba­go will trav­el to Venezuela to ad­vance the coun­try’s oil and gas in­ter­ests.

She has al­so recog­nised the Gov­ern­ment of act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, whose ad­min­is­tra­tion has wel­comed new in­vest­ments and is see­ing a grad­ual lift­ing of some sanc­tions.

Projects be­tween the two coun­tries in­clude the Drag­on Gas Field, which lies in Venezue­lan wa­ters and har­bours 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of nat­ur­al gas—a po­ten­tial boon for T&T. The agree­ment promis­es to chan­nel Venezue­lan gas to T&T, where it can be processed and ex­port­ed as liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG), po­ten­tial­ly re­vi­tal­is­ing the econ­o­my.

Shell is al­so seek­ing to de­vel­op the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee dis­cov­ery, first iden­ti­fied in 1983, which holds an es­ti­mat­ed 10 tril­lion cu­bic feet (tcf) of nat­ur­al gas—7.3 tcf on Venezuela’s side and the re­main­ing 2.7 tcf in Trinidad.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, BP is seek­ing a li­cence to de­vel­op the Man­akin-Cocuina field.

A por­tion of the field lo­cat­ed in Venezue­lan wa­ters forms part of a larg­er off­shore project known as Platafor­ma Deltana.

While Mil­lán Ar­cia ac­knowl­edges the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s im­por­tant steps, he em­pha­sis­es that the process has on­ly just be­gun.

“In Venezuela, the sit­u­a­tion of the in­ter­im gov­ern­ment is quite unique, as it op­er­ates un­der a cer­tain de­gree of pres­sure from both sides. On the one hand, there is pres­sure from the Unit­ed States, and on the oth­er, in­ter­nal pres­sure with­in the coun­try. The for­mer is aimed at con­duct­ing busi­ness pure­ly in the US in­ter­est. The lat­ter seeks to sat­is­fy po­lit­i­cal and strate­gic pres­sures in or­der to re­main in pow­er. Any oth­er coun­try or in­ter­est out­side of these two is sec­ondary. That is the case with Trinidad.”

He opined that the pro­posed vis­it of T&T’s del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela is not, in fact, recog­ni­tion of Del­cy Ro­dríguez as the coun­try’s pres­i­dent, but rather an ac­knowl­edge­ment of T&T’s “dif­fi­cult” eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial sit­u­a­tion.

He added that the sign­ing of gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment agree­ments does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to cap­i­tal in­vest­ment com­mit­ments, but rather sig­nals busi­ness and po­lit­i­cal in­tent.

Even when fi­nalised, such agree­ments may change un­til for­mal con­tracts and fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments are se­cured.

He cit­ed the most re­cent ex­am­ple—the Dragón Gas deal—which was sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing the events of 2025.

Mil­lán Ar­cia out­lined at least two key is­sues in the Venezuela–T&T re­la­tion­ship: po­lit­i­cal and tech­ni­cal-eco­nom­ic.

“Po­lit­i­cal­ly, re­la­tions be­tween the two na­tions have gone off the rails since Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took of­fice, where­as pri­or to his ar­rival, they had main­tained a cer­tain lev­el of sta­bil­i­ty un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, when Min­is­ter Young served as the li­ai­son with Venezuela on en­er­gy mat­ters. There was ca­ma­raderie and al­so mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing. To­day, that is not the case. It is a tense re­la­tion­ship that could take a dras­tic turn at any mo­ment.”

He lament­ed that many “neg­a­tive mem­o­ries” from Trinidad and To­ba­go still linger in Venezuela’s col­lec­tive con­scious­ness, in­clud­ing the coun­try’s pre­vi­ous as­ser­tion that it did not re­quire Venezue­lan gas.

“To­day, it ap­pears that Per­sad-Bisses­sar recog­nis­es that Trinidad does need it—and bad­ly. The mo­ment when she of­fered the is­land as a launch­ing pad to fa­cil­i­tate the US of­fen­sive against the very coun­try that to­day seeks to meet its gas needs re­mains fresh in mem­o­ry.”

Mil­lán Ar­cia al­so point­ed out that US sanc­tions have fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries.

“Years of de­lays linked to changes in US sanc­tions and pol­i­cy to­ward Venezuela have slowed ex­plo­ration progress in the Latin Amer­i­can coun­try. In Ju­ly 2024, BP and part­ner Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go were award­ed an ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion (E&P) li­cence to de­vel­op the Cocuina gas dis­cov­ery, part of the Man­akin-Cocuina field.”

He said that, tech­ni­cal­ly, un­der the 2013 bi­lat­er­al agree­ment be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go, the field’s to­tal re­serves are es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10.25 tcf of gas, of which Venezuela holds 73.75 per cent.

“This rep­re­sents Venezuela’s pri­ma­ry in­ter­est in sov­er­eign con­trol over the largest por­tion of the field—7.3 tcf on its side—which is cur­rent­ly un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).”

He added that, be­tween 2019 and 2020, the two coun­tries agreed to de­vel­op their re­spec­tive sec­tions in­de­pen­dent­ly.

“On the Trinidad side, Man­a­tee is be­ing man­aged by Shell, which ap­pears to be mak­ing very slow progress on de­vel­op­ment plans, de­spite hav­ing an­nounced first gas for 2027. The rea­son is sim­ple from a busi­ness per­spec­tive: the re­serves ap­pear too low to jus­ti­fy a mas­sive cap­i­tal out­lay. That is why Shell, tak­ing ad­van­tage of Chevron’s an­nounce­ment that it is set­ting aside its in­ter­est in Lo­ran to fo­cus on the Orinoco Belt, has tak­en the ini­tia­tive to hold talks with Venezuela to par­tic­i­pate in Lo­ran, pos­si­bly con­nect­ing it to its plat­form(s) in Man­a­tee.”

He con­tin­ued that this could be of in­ter­est to Venezuela in mon­etis­ing off­shore gas re­serves, start­ing with Lo­ran.

“From the in­vestor’s cor­po­rate per­spec­tive, the high po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty cur­rent­ly pre­vail­ing in Venezuela could be a de­ci­sive fac­tor; how­ev­er, the fact that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has recog­nised Del­cy Ro­dríguez as act­ing pres­i­dent pro­vides a cer­tain de­gree of con­fi­dence to en­er­gy cor­po­ra­tions.”

He said the ad­van­tages of a po­ten­tial agree­ment are pri­mar­i­ly tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic: rel­a­tive­ly low de­vel­op­ment costs due to prox­im­i­ty to Man­a­tee, suf­fi­cient proven re­serves, and the po­ten­tial for rel­a­tive­ly rapid pro­duc­tion.

“The is­sues re­volve around reg­u­la­to­ry and geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty, a pos­si­ble re­turn of sanc­tions, and the po­lit­i­cal risk in­her­ent in do­ing busi­ness. This is not so much due to Venezuela it­self, but rather to the sanc­tions that have been tar­get­ing the heart of Venezuela’s oil in­dus­try since 2017.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said these fac­tors have been the pri­ma­ry caus­es of de­lays in var­i­ous agree­ments over the years.

“Venezuela is cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing mo­men­tum in le­gal re­forms, li­cens­ing, and a dri­ve to ac­cel­er­ate the pro­duc­tion and mon­eti­sa­tion of its hy­dro­car­bons. Nev­er­the­less, the ac­tu­al ex­e­cu­tion of the project will de­pend on whether the li­cences re­main sta­ble and whether the par­ties reach fair com­mer­cial terms.”