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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Shell to adhere to the law on Dragon gas deal

by

Curtis Williams
2357 days ago
20190207
Royal Dutch Shell floating platform

Royal Dutch Shell floating platform

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.


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