The Shield of the Amer­i­c­as group of 12 coun­tries to which Trinidad and To­ba­go has signed on, is fo­cused on mil­i­tary ap­proach­es to gang and drug re­duc­tion and elim­i­na­tion.

An­oth­er part of it is en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, the ur­gency of which is on­ly height­ened by the Is­rael/US war against Iran. A south­ern Caribbean en­er­gy hub has emerged with Guyana, Suri­name and Venezuela, and T&T is like­ly to be­come cen­tral to oil and gas pro­cess­ing.

T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar would be drawn to both strate­gies. Her an­ti-gang, drug and crime strate­gies are de­fined by an­ti-home in­va­sion leg­is­la­tion, States of Emer­gency and a Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions bill, pat­terned af­ter Ja­maican law but which failed in Par­lia­ment. The en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty is­sue is re­al for T&T in terms of our cur­rent nat­ur­al gas deficits to meet re­quire­ments from the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and At­lantic LNG. But short­falls al­so mean re­duc­tion of en­er­gy rev­enue and forex earn­ings and, con­se­quent­ly, con­tin­u­ing bud­get deficits and forex short­age.

The last gov­ern­ment un­der Dr Kei­th Row­ley was too tied to the Nico­las Maduro regime to get any help from the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. The stand­ing Prime Min­is­ter, from the be­gin­ning, tied her ca­noe to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s port, cal­cu­lat­ing, cor­rect­ly, that Venezue­lan gas flow to T&T de­pend­ed more on the US than Maduro and the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, even be­fore Maduro was de­posed.

But the press­ing prob­lem for T&T re­mains how to make it while wait­ing for pend­ing gas flows.

On the fi­nan­cial pres­sure and forex short­age front, the re­cent $1 bil­lion re­fi­nanc­ing bond, over­sub­scribed in New York in Jan­u­ary, of­fers a lit­tle more time and fis­cal space. One hun­dred and forty-four in­vestors par­tic­i­pat­ed, up from 93 in the 2023 bond. What this means is that a sig­nif­i­cant pool of savvy in­vestors feel T&T has a vi­able fu­ture. Get­ting T&T off the EU black­list al­so of­fers new op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­fi­nanc­ing at low­er rates with re­duced debt ser­vic­ing oblig­a­tions.

More­over, un­der the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as pro­gramme, there will be sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for forex re­lief. These in­clude cur­ren­cy swap arrange­ments and spe­cial arrange­ments through the US Ex­im Bank to pro­mote busi­ness start-ups, growth and in­no­va­tion for ex­port to the US.

It is clear that with the OFAC li­cences grant­ed to Shell, which restart­ed op­er­a­tions in Venezuela on Mon­day, Drag­on and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee will be on stream, as will Co­cu­na-Manequin. And with US cus­to­di­an­ship of oil and gas in Venezuela, 100 per cent (not just a pro­por­tion) of all gas from these fields will be ac­ces­si­ble. And with the Petrotrin, Suri­name, Guyana and US fac­tors, T&T can be cen­tral to oil and gas pro­cess­ing in the hemi­sphere and At­lantic LNG would be­come a prized as­set. And deep­wa­ter drilling is pro­ceed­ing apace. T&T’s en­er­gy fu­ture seems more se­cure now.

We need­ed some fi­nan­cial breath­ing room un­til Drag­on be­gins to flow and some forex to tide us over un­til rev­enue from Venezue­lan gas be­gins to kick in.

I think our Prime Min­is­ter has made mod­est gains with all of these. An In­di­an in­vest­ment in Petrotrin is more ac­cept­able to the US than, say, Chi­nese in­vest­ment. And a US in­vestor may al­so be­come in­volved. Re­sults from En­er­gy Week in Suri­name (March 30) may well lever­age the syn­er­gy be­tween a re­fin­ery in Trinidad and Suri­namese and Guyanese crude, but al­so the val­ue of our nat­ur­al gas ab­sorp­tion and pro­cess­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

The Shield of the Amer­i­c­as al­so pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer to T&T, which is cru­cial for jobs and in­come high­er up the val­ue chain be­cause of tech­no­log­i­cal con­nec­tiv­i­ty, dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty and sup­ply chain lo­gis­tics. Our new AI Min­istry should be on alert.

But these Shield arrange­ments al­so cre­ate a fault line in Cari­com. Yet, with Petro-Caribe dead now, en­er­gy sup­port from T&T up the is­lands can ease ten­sions. And T&T’s new suc­cess in en­er­gy must fi­nance tech­no­log­i­cal so­phis­ti­ca­tion, cre­ate the con­di­tions for non-en­er­gy in­vest­ments with good jobs, and boost di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of forex earn­ings to re­duce our en­er­gy de­pen­dence here at home. As a coun­try, we have missed too many op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The Shield sum­mit may well be a track to eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty. The cost will be un­equiv­o­cal align­ment with the US and in­creased T&T re­spon­sive­ness to US in­ter­ests. It is an in­ner club with ben­e­fits and oblig­a­tions, a se­lec­tive mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism, which makes both the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and the OAS less po­tent.

But the im­me­di­ate T&T prob­lem is still cash flow. That is true for our Gov­ern­ment as well as for the or­di­nary cit­i­zen. Cash re­mains scarce.