En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine de­nies dis­tanc­ing him­self from the is­sue of the Lo­ran Man­a­tee cross-bor­der gas field with this coun­try and Venezuela.In a re­sponse to the Sun­day Guardian's front-page sto­ry, Ram­nar­ine said in a re­lease on Sun­day: "First­ly, the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of En­er­gy has not dis­tanced him­self from any­thing."What the min­is­ter sought to ex­plain to the Guardian re­porter was the fact that the ne­go­ti­a­tions were con­duct­ed by se­nior pub­lic ser­vants who were very qual­i­fied and com­pe­tent and that the ne­go­ti­a­tions are not con­duct­ed by min­is­ters. It is the min­is­ter and Cab­i­net who make pol­i­cy but it is pub­lic ser­vants who con­duct ne­go­ti­a­tions."

On the is­sue of the "al­most ten per cent drop in lo­cal vot­ing rights," he said: "This is mis­lead­ing. The is­sue was first raised by MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Sep­tem­ber 18. The Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs re­spond­ed to Ms Mc­Don­ald's claims on Sep­tem­ber 23, when he ad­dressed the Sen­ate."He said an ex­tract from his speak­ing notes from that day had been sent to the Guardian.Ram­nar­ine said the vot­ing rights for the Di­rect­ing Com­mit­tee are ap­por­tioned ac­cord­ing to ti­tle to hy­dro­car­bons un­der both the Block 6 (T&T) and Block 2 (Venezuela) pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tracts be­tween the two coun­tries signed dur­ing pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Un­der the prin­ci­ple of pro­duc­tion-shar­ing, hy­dro­car­bons are shared be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the con­trac­tors. In the case of T&T, the 26.94 per cent of the hy­dro­car­bons in the Lo­ran Man­a­tee field which re­side in T&T ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters is shared, he said."There­fore T&T has not lost any­thing. This split­ting of the 26.94 per cent is de­ter­mined by the terms of the Block 6 pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tract that was signed in 1974 and amend­ed in 1993," his state­ment said.Ex­plain­ing the "Right of Ve­to," Ram­nar­ine said all de­ci­sions of the Di­rect­ing Com­mit­tee re­quired a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty. How­ev­er, all de­ci­sions are sub­ject to the right of ve­to ex­er­cis­able by the gov­ern­ments of T&T or the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela if ei­ther con­sid­ers its sov­er­eign in­ter­est may be af­fect­ed, he said. "The in­ter­ests of T&T are there­fore pro­tect­ed." In the re­lease, the min­istry again cau­tioned that "the sen­sa­tion­al­is­ing of this Lo­ran Man­a­tee mat­ter and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion has the po­ten­tial to dam­age the re­la­tion­ship be­tween this coun­try and Venezuela as re­gards this par­tic­u­lar Lo­ran Man­a­tee mat­ter."