Raphael John-Lall

US en­er­gy econ­o­mist Dr Fran­cis­co Monal­di be­lieves that the break­down of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela is on­ly a “pause” and in­evitably busi­ness will tri­umph over pol­i­tics with en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions re­sum­ing.

Monal­di is a lec­tur­er in en­er­gy eco­nom­ics at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty’s De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics, and a lec­tur­er in en­er­gy man­age­ment at the Jones Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, he gave his opin­ion on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

He agrees with the po­si­tion tak­en by Shell that, in­stead of aban­don­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a gas deal be­tween the two coun­tries, the sit­u­a­tion must be mon­i­tored.

It was re­port­ed in the Busi­ness Guardian on Sun­day that Shell said it is mon­i­tor­ing the diplo­mat­ic fall­out be­tween T&T and Venezuela and as­sess­ing any pos­si­ble im­pact on the Drag­on gas project.

“I think that’s what they should do. I mean, Shell has to mon­i­tor events. They know that this is un­like­ly to lead to an elim­i­na­tion of the treaty or can­celling of the con­tract. This is just a pause, most like­ly. And in any sce­nario, they have to mon­i­tor that to see how events un­fold. And de­pend­ing on that, things might even­tu­al­ly get on track again or not,” Monal­di said.

Last Fri­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the de­ci­sion by Venezuela to end ne­go­ti­a­tions would not af­fect the Man­a­tee gas project, which re­mains on track.

“The Man­a­tee project is safe and will pro­ceed,” he said, adding that the min­istry had con­firmed its sta­tus with stake­hold­ers.

In Ju­ly 2024, Shell T&T took the fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion on the Man­a­tee gas field.

Monal­di agreed with Mooni­lal’s po­si­tion on the Man­a­tee project.

“I al­so agree as was said by the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial that the Man­a­tee field will pro­ceed be­cause Venezuela al­ready gave the au­tho­ri­sa­tion to T&T un­der the treaty to just de­vel­op its side of the field and so I think it is go­ing to con­tin­ue. And it’s go­ing to be un­af­fect­ed on that side. How­ev­er, the project that could be af­fect­ed is Drag­on which hasn’t start­ed yet and it doesn’t have even a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion and per­haps it could have some im­pact on the Man­akin-Cocuina project of BP be­cause they were aim­ing to al­so ex­tract on the Venezue­lan side.”

Last week, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro an­nounced that all en­er­gy agree­ments be­tween both coun­tries were sus­pend­ed. Al­so, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been banned from en­ter­ing Venezuela.

Both coun­tries have been in talks for years on the Drag­on gas field, which lies in Venezuela’s wa­ters, with T&T and Venezuela sign­ing a 30-year agree­ment in De­cem­ber 2023.

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T&T needs Venezuela gas

Venezue­lan en­er­gy writer, Werther San­doval, in an ar­ti­cle pub­lished on No­vem­ber 2 in Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias, ac­cused the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion of poli­cies sim­i­lar to the “flawed and il­le­gal mod­el” cur­rent­ly used by Guyana to ap­pro­pri­ate oil from the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion be­tween Guyana and Venezuela.

San­doval paint­ed a bleak pic­ture of the T&T econ­o­my, which the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion jus­ti­fied as the rea­son for the im­por­tance of hav­ing ac­cess to Venezuela’s gas field.

“T&T’s gas pro­duc­tion…has plum­met­ed, falling from a peak of 4.304 bil­lion cu­bic feet (bcf) per day in 2007 to 2.6 bcf per day in 2025. This threat­ens an elec­tric­i­ty grid that is en­tire­ly de­pen­dent on gas (99.5 per cent in 2023), im­pact­ing its petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try and re­duc­ing the econ­o­my’s in­come by near­ly half the val­ue of the goods and ser­vices pro­duced by the coun­try in a year, a cat­e­go­ry econ­o­mists call Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP).”

Re­fer­ring to an ear­li­er en­er­gy re­port au­thored by Venezue­lan oil and gas ex­pert Luis Pietro, San­doval said along with the drop in pro­duc­tion, the num­bers in T&T’s eco­nom­ic fore­casts are af­fect­ed by the lack of use and the wear and tear on the in­fra­struc­ture al­ready in­stalled for the ex­trac­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age and ex­port of gas.

“In fact, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most im­por­tant gas liq­ue­fac­tion and ex­port plant, At­lantic LNG, is fac­ing se­ri­ous prob­lems due to de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion. The most log­i­cal and im­me­di­ate so­lu­tion to over­come this cri­sis would be an agree­ment with Venezuela, but Exxon­Mo­bil’s promise of a US$42.5 mil­lion in­vest­ment could be post­pon­ing, or even ex­clud­ing, any busi­ness with Venezuela.”

San­doval ac­cused the T&T Gov­ern­ment of “greed” in its re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela.

“But the rul­ing group’s greed for easy and quick prof­its in T&T, cou­pled with US pres­sure and de­mands for tech­nolo­gies and large sums of cap­i­tal for the ex­plo­ration of pos­si­ble de­posits, both their own and shared with Venezuela, seem to have led the Prime Min­is­ter to fos­ter any kind of law­less­ness that gen­er­ates con­flicts with Venezuela, in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate her ex­ploita­tion of Venezue­lan gas.”

He said the first “act of in­jus­tice” has been the dis­man­tling of long-stand­ing agree­ments based on the bonds of sol­i­dar­i­ty be­tween the two na­tions, whose shared hu­man and cul­tur­al ties al­low res­i­dents of towns like Macuro and Güiria in Venezuela, and San Fer­nan­do in Trinidad, to trav­el, work, and ac­cept the pres­ence of Venezue­lans with­out re­quir­ing iden­ti­ty doc­u­ments.

“The Prime Min­is­ter de­cid­ed to de­port Venezue­lans lack­ing per­mits to be in the land where they have al­ways forged deep bonds of friend­ship and co­ex­is­tence.”

He added, “But along­side the de­por­ta­tions is the re­sump­tion of re­la­tions with Exxon­Mo­bil. For the first time since 2003, Exxon­Mo­bil is re­turn­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go. They have agreed on a phased ex­plo­ration plan to ad­dress an ul­tra-deep­wa­ter area en­com­pass­ing sev­en blocks off the east coast of Trinidad, at depths of be­tween 2oo and 300 me­tres,” he said, quot­ing T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter.

He said the in­ner work­ings of T&T’s strat­e­gy to re­vive gas ex­ploita­tion are “not easy to de­ci­pher.”

“But the Prime Min­is­ter’s clum­sy and hos­tile at­ti­tude, cou­pled with the US mil­i­tary show­down, against Venezuela, in­di­cates that her pref­er­ence is not for diplo­mat­ic chan­nels based on talks, but for force. Since the gas fields are bor­der and cross-bor­der pock­ets, shared with Venezuela, the Prime Min­is­ter’s hos­tile at­ti­tude trans­forms these fields in­to fric­tion zones prone to vi­o­la­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

He con­clud­ed by say­ing that based on this chain of events, T&T’s Gov­ern­ment’s poli­cies now re­sem­ble those of Guyana.

“And it is there, with that at­ti­tude, that T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter re­sem­bles the Pres­i­dent of Guyana, Ir­faan Ali who, in or­der to prof­it from Venezue­lan oil in the Venezue­lan Es­se­qui­bo, main­tains sub­servient re­la­tions with Exxon­Mo­bil, while boast­ing of his ties to the US Gov­ern­ment.”