Raphael John-Lall

For­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie is hope­ful that T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela will en­ter a “new era” char­ac­terised by greater co­op­er­a­tion and align­ment with the Unit­ed States.

Com­ment­ing on For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers’ meet­ing last week with his Venezue­lan coun­ter­part Félix Plasen­cia, Tewarie said crit­i­cism of that en­gage­ment has been un­help­ful and, in some cas­es, ap­peared to bor­der on “par­ti­san sab­o­tage.”

The dis­cus­sions pro­duced a joint work­ing agen­da cov­er­ing trade, en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, cul­ture and col­lec­tive se­cu­ri­ty, with both gov­ern­ments de­scrib­ing the en­gage­ment as open­ing a “new chap­ter” in bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Tewarie said the joint press re­lease is­sued fol­low­ing the meet­ing demon­strat­ed that the re­la­tion­ship was be­ing placed with­in a broad­er gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment frame­work, with en­er­gy rep­re­sent­ing on­ly one com­po­nent of a much wider agen­da.

“It is clear from the joint press re­lease that or­der and struc­ture are be­ing brought to bear on a new T&T re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela. En­er­gy, while be­ing im­me­di­ate and dom­i­nant in that re­la­tion­ship, is not the on­ly mat­ter iden­ti­fied in what is es­sen­tial­ly an over­ar­ch­ing gen­er­al com­mit­ment, gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment, in six key con­nect­ed ar­eas.”

Be­yond the Maduro-Row­ley era

Ac­cord­ing to Tewarie, the new frame­work is sig­nif­i­cant be­cause it rep­re­sents a de­par­ture from what he de­scribed as the high­ly per­son­al na­ture of re­la­tions be­tween the for­mer Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion and the gov­ern­ment of oust­ed Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

He ar­gued that both coun­tries’ cur­rent lead­er­ship have rea­sons to es­tab­lish a dif­fer­ent re­la­tion­ship, point­ing to Venezue­lan act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez’s shift to­wards co­op­er­a­tion with the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s align­ment with Wash­ing­ton on sev­er­al is­sues.

“It is nec­es­sary for both act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez and T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to dis­tance them­selves from the Maduro/ Row­ley/Young era. Del­cy Ro­dríguez was a part of that but she has made a U-turn to­wards co­op­er­a­tion with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the US. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar wants to move away as far as pos­si­ble from the per­son­al­ist Maduro/ Row­ley era and has aligned un­equiv­o­cal­ly with the US on a num­ber of counts,” he said.

He al­so point­ed out that se­cu­ri­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment were among the most im­por­tant ar­eas re­quir­ing co­op­er­a­tion.

The se­cu­ri­ty agen­da, he not­ed, ex­tends be­yond bi­lat­er­al con­cerns, in­volv­ing drugs, gangs, firearms and transna­tion­al crime. He be­lieves ef­fec­tive man­age­ment of those chal­lenges will re­quire col­lab­o­ra­tion among Venezuela, T&T, Cari­com and the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing in­tel­li­gence and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

En­er­gy and trade

Tewarie said the an­tic­i­pat­ed re­build­ing of Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor could in­crease en­vi­ron­men­tal risks, par­tic­u­lar­ly as ac­tiv­i­ty in­ten­si­fies in east­ern Venezuela and the Gulf of Paria be­comes busier.

He warned that T&T, Venezuela and in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies would need to es­tab­lish both pre­ven­tive and emer­gency mea­sures to pro­tect the Gulf’s fish­eries and oth­er nat­ur­al re­sources.

“Un­less Venezuela, T&T and the oil com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rate well, the fish, shrimps, and oth­er nat­ur­al as­sets of the Gulf of Paria could be in jeop­ardy. There is need there­fore not just for a frame­work, but for an­tic­i­pa­to­ry and emer­gency plans to be put in place.”

Be­yond en­er­gy, Tewarie sees op­por­tu­ni­ties in agri­cul­ture, agro-pro­cess­ing, trade and in­vest­ment.

He said T&T and Venezuela could learn from each oth­er in food self-suf­fi­cien­cy and de­vel­op syn­er­gies in agro-pro­cess­ing.

He al­so ex­pects clos­er eco­nom­ic ties to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the coun­try’s ex­per­tise in the en­er­gy sec­tor, its en­er­gy-ser­vices ca­pa­bil­i­ties and its Eng­lish-speak­ing work­force.

He be­lieves cross-bor­der gas how­ev­er, re­mains the ma­jor im­me­di­ate eco­nom­ic is­sue.

“And cross-bor­der gas is of course the big thing. But the press re­lease men­tions en­er­gy and nat­ur­al re­sources. Who knows where that can end up? We are watch­ing a huge re­gion­al en­er­gy do­main de­vel­op be­fore our eyes.”

He said the es­tab­lish­ment of per­ma­nent com­mu­ni­ca­tion mech­a­nisms could even­tu­al­ly be fol­lowed by the ap­point­ment of a Trinidad and To­ba­go am­bas­sador to Venezuela and high-lev­el vis­its be­tween the two coun­tries.

Over­all, Tewarie be­lieves T&T has made sig­nif­i­cant progress in its re­la­tion­ships with Venezuela, the Unit­ed States, Cari­com and in­ter­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies.

With de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration, cross-bor­der gas, Venezuela’s chang­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States and the broad­er re­gion­al en­er­gy land­scape, he said there was con­sid­er­able un­cer­tain­ty—but al­so con­sid­er­able op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“This part of the world is not a set­tled do­main, but things are set­tling down. A lot of things al­ready done may turn out to have con­se­quences lat­er. One can’t be sure.”

Rap­proche­ment

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lyst Dr Garvin Heer­ah is warn­ing that T&T’s re­newed diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment with Venezuela could de­liv­er sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic, se­cu­ri­ty and strate­gic ben­e­fits, but the Gov­ern­ment must pro­ceed care­ful­ly be­cause of con­tin­u­ing un­cer­tain­ty over Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry and po­ten­tial ex­po­sure to US sanc­tions.

Heer­ah told the Busi­ness Guardian that the sig­nif­i­cance of the rap­proche­ment ex­tends be­yond sim­ply im­prov­ing re­la­tions be­tween the two neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to his analy­sis, the clear­est im­me­di­ate com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ty lies in the re­newed pos­si­bil­i­ty of cross-bor­der en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion.

“The stat­ed agen­da’s in­clu­sion of trade and en­er­gy sig­nals the clear­est near-term com­mer­cial up­side.”

The re­open­ing of di­a­logue could re­vive ef­forts to mon­e­tise the Drag­on and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee gas fields, po­ten­tial­ly pro­vid­ing feed­stock for T&T’s un­der­utilised Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) and petro­chem­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture at Point Fortin and Point Lisas.

Heer­ah al­so sees op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T’s en­er­gy-ser­vices, en­gi­neer­ing and lo­gis­tics com­pa­nies if sanc­tions-re­lat­ed li­cens­ing con­di­tions sur­round­ing Venezuela evolve favourably.

At the same time, he said clos­er re­la­tions could help di­ver­si­fy T&T’s trad­ing re­la­tion­ships at a time when the coun­try is fac­ing a new 10 per cent US tar­iff ex­po­sure.

Agri­cul­ture rep­re­sents an­oth­er po­ten­tial area of eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion, with stronger trade links po­ten­tial­ly con­tribut­ing to re­gion­al food-se­cu­ri­ty re­silience.

How­ev­er, Heer­ah stressed that en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion must be ap­proached care­ful­ly and struc­tured to with­stand scruti­ny un­der ex­ist­ing US sanc­tions frame­works.

“The rap­proche­ment should there­fore be read as open­ing strate­gic op­tion­al­i­ty for T&T, not as re­mov­ing risk from the equa­tion,” he said.

Se­cu­ri­ty ben­e­fits

The se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions could be just as im­por­tant as the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

With T&T lo­cat­ed on­ly about sev­en miles from Venezuela’s Paria Penin­su­la, the two coun­tries are ef­fec­tive­ly con­tigu­ous when it comes to en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty and mi­gra­tion flows.

Heer­ah ar­gues that a func­tion­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel be­tween Port-of-Spain and Cara­cas could re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mis­cal­cu­la­tion in wa­ters where sus­tained US naval ac­tiv­i­ty has al­ready height­ened re­gion­al ten­sions.

“From a re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty-ar­chi­tec­ture per­spec­tive, the val­ue of this rap­proche­ment ex­tends well be­yond the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship.”

It could al­so al­low T&T to play a greater role in shap­ing the se­cu­ri­ty con­se­quences of wider geopo­lit­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion in the Caribbean.

More im­por­tant­ly for do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty, im­proved bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion could fa­cil­i­tate in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing and co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion against traf­fick­ing net­works, arms flows and or­gan­ised crime.

Heer­ah not­ed that such net­works ex­ploit in­sti­tu­tion­al gaps be­tween coun­tries.

“Traf­fick­ing net­works, arms flows, and or­gan­ised-crime groups ex­ploit ex­act­ly the kind of in­sti­tu­tion­al gap that es­tranged bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions cre­ate,” he said.

Restor­ing di­rect co­op­er­a­tion could there­fore strength­en T&T’s abil­i­ty to ad­dress cross-bor­der crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

He said the re­newed re­la­tion­ship could al­so sup­port co­op­er­a­tion in mar­itime-do­main aware­ness, in­clud­ing radar, ves­sel track­ing and coastal sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy.

Pro­ceed­ing in Phas­es

Heer­ah nev­er­the­less cau­tions against as­sum­ing that diplo­mat­ic good­will will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to com­mer­cial re­sults.

He rec­om­mends that en­gage­ment be con­duct­ed in phas­es, be­gin­ning with hu­man­i­tar­i­an and cul­tur­al co­op­er­a­tion be­fore mov­ing in­to more sen­si­tive en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives.

“Se­quence en­gage­ment in phas­es — hu­man­i­tar­i­an and cul­tur­al co­op­er­a­tion first, en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion sec­ond — to build in­sti­tu­tion­al trust be­fore com­mit­ting to high­er-risk, sanc­tions-sen­si­tive com­mit­ments.”