The Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion’s dif­fi­cult bal­anc­ing act of main­tain­ing neu­tral­i­ty on Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal cri­sis, while co­op­er­at­ing with the Nico­las Maduro gov­ern­ment to ex­ploit cross-bor­der gas fields, has just be­come more com­pli­cat­ed.

The lat­est wave of po­lit­i­cal un­rest in Venezuela, trig­gered by protests over the dis­put­ed re­sults of the Ju­ly 28 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion, rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Unit­ed States could re­verse course on its re­cent eas­ing of sanc­tions against the South Amer­i­can na­tion. That could al­so mean re­ver­sals of re­cent clear­ance giv­en by the US Trea­sury De­part­ment for T&T to ex­plore the gas fields that strad­dle our mar­itime bor­der with Venezuela.

Just a few weeks ago, it looked like the many stops and starts on those projects were com­ing to an end, when an agree­ment was reached with Venezuela on a 20-year nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and ex­plo­ration deal with BP and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC). This al­lows for pro­duc­tion from the Cocuina-Man­akin field, off Trinidad’s south-east coast, with 25 per cent of pro­duc­tion ex­pect­ed to sup­ply this coun­try’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and the rest feed­ing the LNG in­dus­try.

It was on­ly in May that the US Trea­sury De­part­ment grant­ed T&T a li­cence to ex­plore that nat­ur­al gas field and in Jan­u­ary 2023, sim­i­lar per­mis­sion was grant­ed for work in the Drag­on Gas field, which has es­ti­mat­ed re­serves of 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet of gas.

These deals were on­ly pos­si­ble be­cause of years of del­i­cate diplo­mat­ic ma­noeu­vring to keep prospects for cross-bor­der ex­plo­ration arrange­ments alive, even as Venezuela sank deep­er in­to po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic tur­moil.

But with no end in sight to the decade-old Venezue­lan cri­sis, this coun­try is now caught be­tween a rock and a hard place as it at­tempts to keep a steady course dur­ing Venezuela’s lat­est up­surge in po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty.

And the sense of un­cer­tain­ty that has shroud­ed this is­sue over the past few days was not dis­pelled by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s de­ci­sion not to make any pro­nounce­ments on the mat­ter.

At a PNM con­ven­tion in his Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy on Sat­ur­day, Dr Row­ley main­tained his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s long-held stance of not tak­ing any po­si­tion on Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal tur­moil.

While this could be a safe op­tion if his­to­ry re­peats, as hap­pened a few years back when at­tempts to in­stall then-op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guaidó as in­ter­im pres­i­dent fiz­zled, things could turn out dif­fer­ent­ly.

Cur­rent ef­forts to dis­lodge Maduro from the pres­i­den­cy may not fol­low the same script and the ex­pect­ed fall­out could have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for this coun­try.

Phys­i­cal prox­im­i­ty alone makes T&T very vul­ner­a­ble should the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela es­ca­late. The cri­sis which trig­gered the world’s largest mass mi­gra­tion — more than 7.7 mil­lion peo­ple have left that coun­try since 2014 — could be en­ter­ing a wor­ry­ing new phase.

The Maduro regime’s fail­ure to im­ple­ment de­mo­c­ra­t­ic re­forms has al­ready re­sult­ed in the US gov­ern­ment re-im­pos­ing sanc­tions. Fur­ther ac­tion along those lines could stall planned de­vel­op­ment and ex­plo­ration in the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin fields, which would be very bad news for T&T.

That is why the Gov­ern­ment’s hands-off pos­tur­ing does not af­ford us the ben­e­fit of be­ing com­plete­ly re­moved from what is hap­pen­ing just next door. As de­ter­mined as Dr Row­ley might be not to take “any­body’s bush tea for a fever that we didn’t cre­ate,” T&T is just too close to avoid any con­se­quences from Venezuela’s post-elec­tion cri­sis.