GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

T&T has been grant­ed a six-month win­dow un­der a new­ly is­sued Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence from the Unit­ed States Trea­sury De­part­ment, which will al­low Gov­ern­ment and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to for­mal­ly en­gage in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela on the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on gas project.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie made the an­nounce­ment at a me­dia con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing it as the re­sult of strate­gic diplo­ma­cy led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Read­ing what the li­cence en­tails, Je­re­mie said it was “is­sued un­der cer­tain ex­ec­u­tive or­ders and it au­tho­ris­es US per­sons, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ees, af­fil­i­ates, con­trac­tors and ser­vice providers em­ployed by or act­ing on be­half of or for the di­rect or in­di­rect ben­e­fit of the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd, Shell, PLC, Fu­tu­ra Clara Lim­it­ed, and their sub­sidiaries and their af­fil­i­ates and con­trac­tors to en­gage in trans­ac­tions or­di­nar­i­ly in­ci­dent and nec­es­sary to ne­go­ti­a­tions with the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela and Petroleos, the Venezuela ex­ec­u­tives in con­nec­tion with the Drag­on gas project.”

The li­cence was award­ed af­ter an ap­pli­ca­tion was made by Gov­ern­ment and the NGC on May 19.

In briefly stat­ing what the grant­i­ng of the li­cence meant for T&T, the AG said, “First of all, it al­lows us to en­ter in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela, which at the present time would be pro­hib­it­ed un­der sanc­tions. We have six months to ne­go­ti­ate. With­in pa­ra­me­ters.”

The six-month pe­ri­od is valid un­til April 2026. He, how­ev­er, de­clined to share de­tails about the com­mer­cial terms, adding that Gov­ern­ment has al­ready be­gun to take the per­mit­ted steps pur­suant to the li­cence to ad­vance the project.

“We have a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty and the Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to ex­ploit that,” he re­it­er­at­ed with­out di­vulging de­tails.

De­clar­ing that Drag­on is “alive” the AG as­sured, “You have to hit com­mer­cial tar­gets for US com­pa­nies. We don’t think those tar­gets are hard to meet. They are rea­son­able ... It’s a com­mer­cial win-win for all of the par­ties. The Unit­ed States ben­e­fits from this arrange­ment. There are terms and con­di­tions in the li­cence which en­sure that US com­pa­nies ben­e­fit and there are tiers as to ex­act­ly how they should ben­e­fit. Trinidad ob­vi­ous­ly stands to ben­e­fit and to a cer­tain ex­tent, of course, the peo­ple of Venezuela will ben­e­fit.”

Pressed fur­ther on what those com­mer­cial tar­gets may look like, Je­re­mie main­tained he could on­ly state that these “ben­e­fit US en­ti­ties with­in the arrange­ment that we now have,” adding he could not say any­thing else, in­clud­ing what any of the dol­lar fig­ures would look like.

En­er­gy gi­ant Shell, a key stake­hold­er in the project, was ac­knowl­edged as an “in­valu­able part­ner” by Je­re­mie, though he re­frained from elab­o­rat­ing on its role in the li­cence be­ing grant­ed.

The AG al­so de­clined to state whether Gov­ern­ment has been in con­tact with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to start those ne­go­ti­a­tions.

On the is­sue of trans­paren­cy and pub­lic, in light of past crit­i­cisms that ne­go­ti­a­tions un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion lacked open­ness, Je­re­mie re­spond­ed by giv­ing some more de­tails.

“Three days ago, there was no li­cence. To­day, there is,” he said as he again de­clared that the Drag­on gas project is “alive.”

The li­cence came fol­low­ing talks be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Wash­ing­ton on Sep­tem­ber 30.

On whether these state­ments may be pre-emp­tive, giv­en the tense sit­u­a­tion be­tween Venezuela and the US, cou­pled with the pres­ence of US war­ships in Caribbean wa­ters, Je­re­mie in­sist­ed he had rea­son for say­ing the deal is alive.

“I might not have said that we have be­gun ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela... What I mean by that is that we might not have sat around a ta­ble. No one has gone to Cara­cas...But that does not mean to say that there has been ra­dio si­lence be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela,” he said.

On the is­sues such as com­pen­sa­tion to Venezuela, Je­re­mie on­ly said the li­cence does speak to that mat­ter “oblique­ly,” adding this is some­thing that has to be borne in mind in the course of the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

On De­cem­ber 21, 2023, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment is­sued a 30-year li­cence to the NGC and Shell to de­vel­op and ex­port nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on gas field to T&T.

The OFAC played a key role in grant­i­ng this li­cence un­der the then Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Cham­bers op­ti­mistic

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (AM­CHAM T&T) said it be­lieved the Drag­on gas project would en­hance the na­tion’s medi­um-term eco­nom­ic out­look and strength­en its po­si­tion as a lead­ing and re­li­able hemi­spher­ic part­ner in en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

“This li­cence is more than a reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stone; it is a vote of con­fi­dence in T&T and our en­er­gy fu­ture,” it said.

AM­CHAM T&T al­so not­ed this was an­oth­er pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tion of this coun­try’s sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship with the US, say­ing the li­cence paved the way for legal­ly com­pli­ant cross-bor­der col­lab­o­ra­tion on the Drag­on gas project.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T al­so ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to the Gov­ern­ment on the OFAC li­cence, say­ing it al­lows T&T, along with state en­ti­ties and pri­vate com­pa­nies, to en­gage with Venezuela with­out be­ing af­fect­ed by sanc­tions.

It not­ed this meant the in­volved en­ti­ties may re­sume work on com­mer­cial and tech­ni­cal terms over the next six months.