Wednes­day’s meet­ing in New York be­tween the lead­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela is a wel­come de­vel­op­ment in a re­la­tion­ship that has too of­ten been con­strained by geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions. Com­ing on the heels of the Sep­tem­ber 3 vis­it to Cara­cas by T&T’s Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, it sig­nals a po­ten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­set in re­la­tions be­tween the two neigh­bours.

The joint state­ment is­sued af­ter the talks reaf­firmed the coun­tries’ com­mit­ment to friend­ship, co­op­er­a­tion, mu­tu­al re­spect and good neigh­bourli­ness. It al­so con­firmed that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is “in­deed per­sona gra­ta in Venezuela,” re­vers­ing the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly’s 2025 de­c­la­ra­tion that she was per­sona non gra­ta.

How­ev­er, the suc­cess of this diplo­mat­ic thaw should not be mea­sured by cor­dial lan­guage alone. Its true val­ue will de­pend on whether it de­liv­ers tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for the peo­ple and economies of both coun­tries.

For Trinidad and To­ba­go, that means plac­ing nat­ur­al gas co­op­er­a­tion at the cen­tre of the re­newed re­la­tion­ship.

The dis­cus­sions in Cara­cas and New York must now trans­late in­to con­crete progress on de­vel­op­ing nat­ur­al gas re­sources shared by the two coun­tries, as well as fields on Venezuela’s side of the mar­itime bound­ary. If man­aged with com­mer­cial dis­ci­pline, po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry cer­tain­ty, those projects could be trans­for­ma­tive for both economies.

For T&T, Venezue­lan gas is not sim­ply an at­trac­tive op­por­tu­ni­ty; it is in­creas­ing­ly es­sen­tial to the fu­ture of the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

For more than a decade, the na­tion’s LNG, petro­chem­i­cal and down­stream in­dus­tries have grap­pled with de­clin­ing do­mes­tic gas sup­plies. The se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion was un­der­scored this week when Pro­man CEO David Cas­sidy de­scribed the gas sup­ply en­vi­ron­ment as “con­strained and un­cer­tain” while an­nounc­ing a re­duc­tion in the com­pa­ny’s lo­cal work­force. His com­ments fol­low Methanex’s de­ci­sion to in­def­i­nite­ly idle its Ti­tan methanol plant and Nu­trien’s clo­sure of its five ni­tro­gen plants in T&T. At the heart of all these de­ci­sions are con­cerns about gas sup­ply and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Ad­di­tion­al gas from projects such as Drag­on, Lo­ran-Man­a­tee and Man­akin-Cocuina could help sus­tain ex­ist­ing in­dus­tri­al ca­pac­i­ty, im­prove the util­i­sa­tion of ma­jor en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ments and cre­ate con­di­tions for re­newed down­stream growth. The ben­e­fits would ex­tend be­yond en­er­gy com­pa­nies, gen­er­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­gi­neer­ing firms, fab­ri­ca­tors, lo­gis­tics providers, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and work­ers across the wider econ­o­my.

But this op­por­tu­ni­ty al­so car­ries risks and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

The Gov­ern­ment must pur­sue Venezue­lan gas with ur­gency while recog­nis­ing the geopo­lit­i­cal, reg­u­la­to­ry and com­mer­cial com­plex­i­ties in­volved. The ex­pe­ri­ence of the Drag­on project demon­strates that po­lit­i­cal good­will alone can­not bring gas to mar­ket. Agree­ments must be com­mer­cial­ly vi­able, legal­ly sound and re­silient to shifts in re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

Equal­ly im­por­tant, both sides must avoid reck­less rhetoric. This diplo­mat­ic open­ing re­mains frag­ile and must be pro­tect­ed through care­ful ne­go­ti­a­tion and prac­ti­cal co­op­er­a­tion.

T&T needs gas. Venezuela has gas. The chal­lenge now is to trans­form that re­al­i­ty in­to a durable eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship. At a time when the coun­try’s down­stream en­er­gy sec­tor is un­der mount­ing strain, it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford to squan­der.