Cur­tis Williams

Roy­al Dutch Shell, the com­pa­ny that is in part­ner­ship with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to pur­chase and trans­port nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Field, has said it will com­ply with all laws that may ap­ply to the deal.

In an ad­dress to the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, the com­pa­ny’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Non-Op­er­at­ed Ven­ture, Jen­na Joseph, ac­knowl­edged that Shell was con­cerned with the on­go­ing po­lit­i­cal strife in the neigh­bour­ing South Amer­i­can coun­try and was wor­ried about the fate of Shell em­ploy­ees work­ing in the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic.

She said: “We al­so can­not ig­nore the sever­i­ty of what is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in our neigh­bour­ing Venezuela. We are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing events and re­main hope­ful that the sit­u­a­tion can be re­solved peace­ful­ly. Our pri­or­i­ty re­mains our col­leagues who re­side in that coun­try and we re­main in close con­tact with them. Through­out this pe­ri­od we are al­so go­ing to ful­ly com­ply with all ap­plic­a­ble laws and trade con­trols.”

T&T and Venezuela have been in ne­go­ti­a­tions for the pur­chase of gas from Venezuela to be used to sup­ply both the petro­chem­i­cal plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and for ex­port from At­lantic LNG’s ter­mi­nal in Point Fortin.

Both coun­tries have so far signed a Heads of Gov­ern­ment Agree­ment but the vi­tal Gas Sales Agree­ment is yet to be inked.

Shell laud­ed the deal say­ing it was a mar­quee achieve­ment and a pos­i­tive step in nat­ur­al gas se­cu­ri­ty.

“The his­toric sign­ing last Au­gust of an agree­ment be­tween the gov­ern­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela for the de­liv­ery of gas to our Hi­bis­cus plat­form fa­cil­i­ties was a mar­quee achieve­ment and rep­re­sent­ed a pos­i­tive step to­ward in­creas­ing our gas for­tunes. That said, and while we con­tin­ue to work with both gov­ern­ments and our oth­er stake­hold­ers, we are equal­ly aware that this is but one step in a se­ries of steps and there is still a great deal to be done to bring the Drag­on deal to re­al­i­ty. “Joseph ar­gued.

On­ly re­cent­ly the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion placed ad­di­tion­al sanc­tions on Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and on the coun­try’s state-owned com­pa­ny, Petroles De Venezuela Sud Amer­i­ca, PDVSA. These are the sec­ond set of sanc­tions placed on Venezuela and they ef­fec­tive­ly froze all of PDVSA’s as­sets in the US and re­quire that any mon­ey made in deals be­tween the com­pa­ny and US firms be held in es­crow ac­counts that will be in­ac­ces­si­ble as long as Maduro re­mains in pow­er.

In ad­di­tion to mak­ing it hard­er for Venezuela to ex­port oil, the sanc­tions al­so make it hard­er and more ex­pen­sive for US com­pa­nies to send fu­el prod­ucts known as dilu­ents in the oth­er di­rec­tion.

Since the first set of sanc­tions were im­posed Shell had re­moved all its US per­son­nel from the project and moved ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol to T&T from Hous­ton.

The T&T gov­ern­ment said it was seek­ing ad­vice if the sanc­tions were like­ly to im­pact this coun­try.