A num­ber of econ­o­mists with an in­ter­na­tion­al and en­er­gy per­spec­tive, pre­dict­ed, in Thurs­day’s Busi­ness Guardian, un­cer­tain­ty as to whether the Drag­on Gas deal be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela can be re­turned to prac­ti­cal vi­a­bil­i­ty.

What is cer­tain from the analy­ses, there ex­ist com­pli­cat­ed cir­cum­stances which can evolve be­tween the Unit­ed States and the new­ly in­stalled Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez, who was the deputy to the oust­ed Nico­las Maduro.

Such con­cerns re­late not on­ly to the is­sues sur­round­ing the Drag­on arrange­ments, but even more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the present po­ten­tial for a wider po­lit­i­cal in­ter­na­tion­al im­broglio emerg­ing. Will Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, in Wash­ing­ton, al­low the act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent a free hand to man­age the econ­o­my out of the present cri­sis, or will he stay res­olute that “we will run Venezuela.”

Act­ing Pres­i­dent Ro­driguez has so far been in­sist­ing on the in­de­pen­dence of her coun­try to make de­ci­sions in its own in­ter­est. Pre­sum­ably, she has agreed to “turn over 30 to 50 mil­lion bar­rels of oil” to the US. She has, how­ev­er, made it clear that the quan­ti­ty of oil as list­ed above will be “sold at mar­ket rates.” What is un­clear is whether the oil ship­ments seized by the US mil­i­tary will be count­ed as a por­tion of the whole.

Pos­ing even greater com­pli­ca­tions is the ob­vi­ous in­ten­tion of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to con­tin­ue block­ing and/or con­fis­cat­ing Venezue­lan ex­ports of oil leav­ing the hemi­sphere. Will the Ro­driguez ad­min­is­tra­tion have no say in such a pos­si­bil­i­ty, and what of Venezuela be­ing able to re­pay Chi­na for that which it in­vest­ed in procur­ing the oil from Cara­cas? Chi­na has al­ready in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to take le­gal ac­tion to re­trieve what­ev­er pay­ment it may have made for Venezue­lan oil.

On the stat­ed in­struc­tion of the US Pres­i­dent to the cor­po­ra­tions to in­vest in the con­struc­tion and re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the oil in­fra­struc­ture in Venezuela, the costs can be pro­hib­i­tive and the risk of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­rup­tion high, as stat­ed by the en­er­gy and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts.

Re­gard­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly agreed to, now can­celled, Drag­on Gas arrange­ment be­tween T&T and Venezuela, the is­sue will be whether our Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and the in­ter­im Venezue­lan leader Ro­driguez can put aside what­ev­er per­son­al en­mi­ty is left be­hind by the trade in harsh words, and, in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of both coun­tries, come to an agree­ment to re­turn the Drag­on Gas agree­ment to life, if so al­lowed.

Po­lit­i­cal­ly, the or­der­ing of the ar­rest of Ma­jor Gen­er­al Javier Mar­cano Tá­ba­ta, un­der a charge of trea­son, for the be­tray­al of oust­ed Pres­i­dent Maduro, his wife Cil­ia Flo­res, the Bo­li­var­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion, and the peo­ple of Venezuela, will sure­ly have ex­ten­sions and reper­cus­sions.

Res­o­lu­tion of the prob­lems list­ed above and sev­er­al oth­ers is crit­i­cal to the very ex­is­tence of the en­tire Caribbean re­gion.

If those who have dis­missed the de­ci­sion tak­en to have the Caribbean Sea re­main as a zone of peace con­tin­ue to ac­tive­ly ag­i­tate against it, there can be dis­rup­tion in the re­gion as in­ter­ven­tion from out­side con­tin­ues and ex­pands.

T&T and the rest of Cari­com may have ze­ro in­flu­ence on the new ‘Don­roe doc­trine’ be­ing per­pet­u­at­ed by the US Pres­i­dent, but mem­bers must work to­geth­er to avoid the worst pos­si­ble out­comes.