The Grena­da gov­ern­ment is propos­ing that a tri-lat­er­al joint com­mis­sion be es­tab­lished with Venezuela and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to guide the process for de­mar­cat­ing mar­itime bound­aries.

“Grena­da has al­so start­ed an ini­tia­tive to de­lim­it the mar­itime bound­aries with Venezuela and with St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. We com­plet­ed the process you know with Trinidad and To­ba­go back in 2012, we have nev­er been clear on what is the bound­ary be­tween Grena­da and Venezuela and what is the bound­ary be­tween St Vin­cent and Grena­da,” said Naz­im Burke, chair­man of Grena­da’s oil and gas Tech­ni­cal Work­ing Group (TWG).

Burke, a for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter, pro­vid­ing an up­date on the TWG ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing a town hall meet­ing here, said that Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell has al­ready sub­mit­ted the tri-lat­er­al pro­pos­al to the lead­ers of the two oth­er coun­tries.

“What has hap­pened is that our prime min­is­ter has put for­ward a pro­pos­al to the Pres­i­dent of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela and the Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent for the es­tab­lish­ment of a tri­lat­er­al com­mis­sion, a joint tri­lat­er­al com­mis­sion that will be com­prise of ten peo­ple,” he said.

“In essence there will be three peo­ple from each of the three coun­tries and a chair­man from an­oth­er coun­try that will guide this process and work to­wards the com­ple­tion of the bound­aries be­tween our three coun­tries,” he said, adding that leas­ing prop­er­ty whether on land or sea would re­quire the own­er know­ing the bound­ary.

“It is a very im­por­tant step as well be­cause you can­not go about leas­ing out land to peo­ple with­out know­ing where your bound­ary is, you can­not go about leas­ing out mar­itime space to peo­ple with­out know­ing where your bound­aries are,” he said.

Burke told the town hall meet­ing that dur­ing the pass six months the TWG mem­bers have been hold­ing dis­cus­sions with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er com­pa­nies, which have con­duct­ed re­search and have spa­tial vec­tor da­ta in their pos­ses­sion about Grena­da’s oil and gas.

In Sep­tem­ber, Grena­da and T&T agreed to ex­tend their ex­ist­ing co­op­er­a­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor and an­nounced plans to sign­ing a date use agree­ment.

A joint state­ment is­sued fol­low­ing talks in Port-of -Spain be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, not­ed that the two coun­tries “ are de­sirous of con­tin­u­ing co-op­er­a­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor”.

The state­ment not­ed that in 2012, the two coun­tries had ex­e­cut­ed a frame­work agree­ment con­cern­ing en­er­gy sec­tor co-op­er­a­tion for a 10-year pe­ri­od from Sep­tem­ber 3 that year “with au­to­mat­ic re­new­al pur­suant to Ar­ti­cle 10 of the agree­ment and there­fore is still in force”.

The state­ment said as a re­sult, T&T “will seek ap­proval and com­mu­ni­cate” to Grena­da, the mem­bers of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee for T&T “in the next three weeks, to ac­ti­vate dis­cus­sions in the mat­ter.

The state­ment said that Port-of-Spain will al­so be col­lab­o­rat­ing with a TWG to as­sist with de­vel­op­ment of a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the pe­tro­le­um sec­tor in Grena­da and al­so ex­tend tech­ni­cal per­sons who can re­view the study and work be­ing done by the con­sul­tant. (CMC)