An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend gas agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go has prompt­ed calls for calm, diplo­ma­cy, and re­newed eco­nom­ic fo­cus from lo­cal busi­ness lead­ers and econ­o­mists.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro an­nounced the de­ci­sion last evening, af­ter his Vice Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­dríguez, rec­om­mend­ed the move af­ter ac­cus­ing T&T of try­ing to pro­voke a war with the ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly war­ship in Port-of-Spain and of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the CIA. She rec­om­mend­ed that Cara­cas end the 2015 En­er­gy Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment, which al­lows for joint gas de­vel­op­ment across both na­tions’ mar­itime bor­ders.

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, be­fore Maru­do’s con­fir­ma­tion of the move, the coun­try’s largest busi­ness group, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce, de­scribed Ro­dríguez’s com­ments as dis­ap­point­ing. It not­ed that the 2015 En­er­gy Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment was found­ed on mu­tu­al re­spect and ex­plic­it­ly pro­tect­ed the sov­er­eign­ty of both na­tions.

The cham­ber ac­knowl­edged Venezuela’s right to act with­in its na­tion­al in­ter­est but re­mind­ed that the frame­work had been de­signed to pro­mote joint de­vel­op­ment of shared gas de­posits, in­fra­struc­ture col­lab­o­ra­tion such as pipelines and pro­cess­ing in Trinidad, and the mon­eti­sa­tion of Venezue­lan off­shore gas through this coun­try’s ex­ist­ing plants.

The cham­ber added that the fun­da­men­tal log­ic be­hind the agree­ment still holds to­day, with po­ten­tial ben­e­fits for both T&T and Venezuela. It urged both sides to main­tain di­a­logue and pre­serve the co­op­er­a­tive spir­it that guid­ed the deals’ cre­ation, adding that mu­tu­al eco­nom­ic gain and re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty de­pend on steady en­gage­ment rather than con­fronta­tion.

Econ­o­mist Dr Justin Ram said the de­vel­op­ment could serve as a cru­cial wake-up call for T&T to ac­cel­er­ate long-de­layed di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts. For decades, he ex­plained, en­er­gy wealth has cre­at­ed a com­fort zone that masked weak­ness­es in the rest of the econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly as rev­enues from oil and gas al­lowed the State to sub­sidise con­sump­tion while pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lagged.

He warned that the coun­try is now fac­ing the lim­its of this mod­el, as oil and gas rev­enues can no longer sus­tain gov­ern­ment spend­ing or pro­tect liv­ing stan­dards.

Ram be­lieves that while ef­forts to sus­tain the en­er­gy sec­tor should con­tin­ue, equal or greater at­ten­tion must be giv­en to build­ing strong non-en­er­gy in­dus­tries.

Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent De­o­raj Ma­hase said while cross-bor­der gas projects are use­ful, they should not be treat­ed as the sole path to growth.
He point­ed to re­cent Gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives such as the Exxon­Mo­bil ul­tra-deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration agree­ment, dis­cus­sions on re­open­ing the re­fin­ery, and new non-en­er­gy in­vest­ments high­light­ed in the 2026 na­tion­al bud­get as ex­am­ples of a more bal­anced ap­proach.

Ma­hase said the coun­try’s strat­e­gy must con­tin­ue to fo­cus on build­ing re­silience across both sec­tors, sup­port­ed by steady diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment with neigh­bours.
He added that the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to main­tain­ing cor­dial, peace­ful re­la­tions in the re­gion demon­strates its com­mit­ment to sta­bil­i­ty and in­de­pen­dence, even amid ris­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion.

Mean­while, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers chair­man Vivek Char­ran said the lat­est com­ments from Cara­cas should not cause pan­ic. He de­scribed them as part of the “diplo­mat­ic rhetoric” that of­ten ac­com­pa­nies mo­ments of re­gion­al strain, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en Venezuela’s on­go­ing fric­tion with the Unit­ed States.

Char­ran not­ed that Venezuela has pre­vi­ous­ly made ag­gres­sive state­ments in oth­er re­gion­al dis­putes, in­clud­ing its claim over Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, which ul­ti­mate­ly did not es­ca­late in­to ac­tion. He said the tone of dis­course be­tween Port-of-Spain and Cara­cas has not de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and that T&T has wise­ly kept its lan­guage mea­sured and diplo­mat­ic.