Shell Glob­al CEO Wael Sawan has placed Venezuela and the pend­ing US sanc­tions ap­provals at the top of the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al pri­or­i­ties, sig­nalling that off­shore gas de­vel­op­ments could soon be tied di­rect­ly in­to T&T’s en­er­gy sys­tem.

Speak­ing with Bloomberg yes­ter­day, Sawan con­firmed that Shell is await­ing clear­ance from the US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) to ad­vance off­shore Venezue­lan gas projects that could feed in­to ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad.

“We have been work­ing pre­vi­ous­ly un­der OFAC li­cences to look at de­vel­op­ing off­shore gas re­sources that could be linked back in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­to fa­cil­i­ties that al­ready have ca­pac­i­ty,” Sawan said.

Ap­proval would al­low Shell to move to­wards a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion with­in a rel­a­tive­ly short time­frame, with first gas pos­si­ble a few years af­ter that.
“It’ll be good for the Venezue­lan peo­ple and great for the Trinida­di­ans,” he said, fram­ing the project as con­sis­tent with US pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives and re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

The com­ments come against a shift­ing OFAC land­scape for Trinidad and To­ba­go. The coun­try re­ceived its first US sanc­tions li­cence for the Drag­on gas field in Jan­u­ary 2023, with Shell and state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny named as au­tho­rised par­tic­i­pants. That li­cence was lat­er with­drawn in May 2025. A re­vised au­tho­ri­sa­tion was is­sued in Oc­to­ber, re­open­ing the door for ne­go­ti­a­tions on the field’s de­vel­op­ment, though not yet grant­i­ng full ex­e­cu­tion ap­proval.

Drag­on, lo­cat­ed in Venezue­lan wa­ters near the mar­itime bor­der, has long been viewed as a crit­i­cal sup­ply op­tion for Trinidad’s At­lantic LNG and down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, both of which have faced de­clin­ing do­mes­tic gas avail­abil­i­ty.

Sawan’s re­marks sug­gest Shell sees re­newed mo­men­tum, pend­ing Wash­ing­ton’s next move.

— An­drea Perez-Sobers