Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that there was a sec­ond ma­jor oil spill em­a­nat­ing from Trinidad wa­ters is ev­i­dence that re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and T&T re­main frosty and there are dire se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of this.

This is the view of se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Dr Garvin Heer­ah in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

Ear­li­er this month, state-owned oil com­pa­ny Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um stat­ed that there is cur­rent­ly no ev­i­dence to sup­port the pres­ence of large amounts of hy­dro­car­bons in the sea, fol­low­ing an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged oil spill flagged by Venezuela.

“The lat­est diplo­mat­ic spat be­tween Venezuela and T&T trig­gered by Cara­cas’s al­le­ga­tions that an oil spill orig­i­nat­ing in Trinidad’s wa­ters has fouled Venezue­lan coast­line and fish­ing grounds is not, at its core, an en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­pute. It is the most re­cent front in a mul­ti-di­men­sion­al strate­gic con­test be­tween two neigh­bours sep­a­rat­ed by eleven kilo­me­tres of sea and di­vid­ed by pro­found­ly di­ver­gent geopo­lit­i­cal align­ments. To analyse it on­ly through an en­vi­ron­men­tal lens is to miss the ar­chi­tec­ture of the cri­sis en­tire­ly,” Heer­ah said.

He al­so said that the Venezuela–Trinidad and To­ba­go oil spill dis­pute is a mi­cro­cosm of a broad­er re­gion­al re­align­ment that is still in progress.

“The post-Maduro tran­si­tion in Venezuela is un­re­solved. The new act­ing gov­ern­ment’s pos­ture to­ward Port-of-Spain re­mains ad­ver­sar­i­al even as it nav­i­gates its own in­ter­na­tion­al re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. T&T for its part, has trad­ed one set of risks such as en­er­gy de­pen­den­cy and prox­im­i­ty to an au­thor­i­tar­i­an neigh­bour for an­oth­er, name­ly the volatil­i­ty of deep align­ment with a US ad­min­is­tra­tion whose Caribbean pol­i­cy has been in­ter­ven­tion­ist, un­pre­dictable, and at times legal­ly con­test­ed.”

To add to this com­plex sce­nario, two weeks ago, it was al­so re­port­ed that the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment grant­ed Shell a li­cence to ex­tract 1.7 tril­lion cu­bic feet (TCF) of nat­ur­al gas from the Lo­ran field in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

All of the gas from phase one will be ex­port­ed to T&T. It will be ex­tract­ed via the Shell-owned Man­a­tee plat­form (lo­cat­ed in T&T wa­ters) and processed at the Beach­field fa­cil­i­ty.

Heer­ah said the crux of this analy­sis rests on three in­ter­lock­ing ar­gu­ments as he notes that Venezuela is send­ing dif­fer­ent sig­nals to dif­fer­ent ac­tors.

“Venezuela is not in­co­her­ent; it is mul­ti-track­ing: Shell gets Lo­ran, Guyana gets de­fi­ance, T&T gets an oil spill al­le­ga­tion. Each au­di­ence re­ceives a dif­fer­ent sig­nal si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The Shell doc­trine cre­ates a dan­ger­ous prece­dent, en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion with­out diplo­mat­ic restora­tion leaves se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion per­ma­nent­ly of­fline and that is where or­gan­ised crime wins. Diplo­ma­cy is a load-bear­ing struc­ture, not an op­tion, the clos­ing ar­gu­ment is de­lib­er­ate­ly un­am­bigu­ous and de­signed to be quotable in both broad­cast and pol­i­cy con­texts.”

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions

Heer­ah said the cur­rent fric­tion did not emerge in a vac­u­um.

He re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that since Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­turn to pow­er, T&T has ex­e­cut­ed a sharp piv­ot away from the ac­com­mo­da­tion­ist pos­ture of its pre­de­ces­sor gov­ern­ment to­ward an ex­plic­it­ly pro-Wash­ing­ton stance and that repo­si­tion­ing had di­rect con­se­quences.

He added that when the Unit­ed States in­ten­si­fied its mar­itime in­ter­dic­tion cam­paign in the South­ern Caribbean, in­clud­ing ki­net­ic strikes against al­leged drug-traf­fick­ing ves­sels, Port-of-Spain not on­ly de­clined to ob­ject but pub­licly en­dorsed the op­er­a­tions. Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­c­la­ra­tion that traf­fick­ers should be killed “vi­o­lent­ly” was un­am­bigu­ous in its align­ment.

He said what the na­tion is now wit­ness­ing with the oil spill al­le­ga­tions is Venezuela de­ploy­ing an en­vi­ron­men­tal griev­ance as a diplo­mat­ic in­stru­ment. This is not a nov­el tac­tic, but an ef­fec­tive one.

“By de­mand­ing that Trinidad ‘ful­ly as­sume its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,’ Cara­cas is not pri­mar­i­ly seek­ing re­me­di­a­tion. It is as­sert­ing moral stand­ing in a bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship where it cur­rent­ly holds lit­tle lever­age. The tim­ing, ab­sent ver­i­fied co­or­di­nates or a clear­ly iden­ti­fied source ves­sel, in­vites scruti­ny.”

Hav­ing said that, he added that the re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions are re­al and warned of crim­i­nals el­e­ments tak­ing ad­van­tage of Gov­ern­ment in­ac­tion both sides.

“The South­ern Caribbean mar­itime cor­ri­dor is al­ready one of the world’s most con­test­ed nar­co-traf­fick­ing routes. When the two lit­toral states flank­ing it are in ac­tive diplo­mat­ic hos­til­i­ty, in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing ceas­es, joint pa­trol pro­to­cols break down, and the vac­u­um is filled by transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions that thrive pre­cise­ly in such gov­er­nance gaps. From a se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture stand­point, this de­te­ri­o­ra­tion is con­se­quen­tial for Cari­com and for any vi­able re­gion­al mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty frame­work.”

He added, “The 11-kilo­me­tre Bo­cas pas­sage be­tween Trinidad’s north­west penin­su­la and Venezuela’s Paria Penin­su­la is one of the most porous and con­se­quen­tial mar­itime bor­ders in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. It is a tran­sit cor­ri­dor for nar­cotics, firearms and ir­reg­u­lar mi­grants and it has been so for decades. But the cur­rent diplo­mat­ic hos­til­i­ty in­tro­duces new vari­ables.”

With for­mal diplo­mat­ic chan­nels now de­grad­ed, he said the man­age­ment of this bor­der de­pends in­creas­ing­ly on op­er­a­tional-lev­el de­ci­sions by coast guards, port of­fi­cials and law en­force­ment agen­cies op­er­at­ing with­out strate­gic guid­ance.

“The risk of mis­cal­cu­la­tion with a de­tained ves­sel, an in­ter­cept­ed of­fi­cial, a con­test­ed res­cue op­er­a­tion is el­e­vat­ed. In an en­vi­ron­ment where Venezuela is al­ready ac­cus­ing T&T of har­bour­ing pi­rates and sup­port­ing US mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion, the thresh­old for es­ca­la­tion is low­er than it has been in a gen­er­a­tion.”

En­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact

Set­ting aside the diplo­mat­ic ma­noeu­vring, Heer­ah said the en­vi­ron­men­tal di­men­sion de­mands sober analy­sis in its own right.

He said the Gulf of Paria, the se­mi-en­closed body of wa­ter be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela is an eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive and eco­nom­i­cal­ly crit­i­cal ma­rine ecosys­tem. Its re­strict­ed cir­cu­la­tion pat­terns mean that hy­dro­car­bon con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in­tro­duced in­to it does not dis­si­pate read­i­ly. It ac­cu­mu­lates in sed­i­ment, bioac­cu­mu­lates in the food chain, and per­sists on man­grove root sys­tems in ways that can take decades to re­verse.

He added that T&T has di­rect in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry of this draw­ing the ex­am­ple of the Feb­ru­ary 2024 tanker sink­ing in its ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters which gen­er­at­ed an oil slick that spread in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters, demon­strat­ing that pol­lu­tion in the Bo­cas recog­nis­es no sov­er­eign­ty.

“The cur­rent al­le­ga­tions from Cara­cas, if borne out, would rep­re­sent the sec­ond sig­nif­i­cant cross-bor­der spill event in un­der three years. The prece­dent mat­ters: it es­tab­lish­es the Gulf of Paria as a shared li­a­bil­i­ty, not mere­ly a shared as­set.”

He not­ed that the long-term ef­fects op­er­ate at dif­fer­ent lev­els as eco­log­i­cal­ly, re­peat­ed or chron­ic hy­dro­car­bon ex­po­sure de­grades coral, sea­grass beds, and man­grove habi­tat the nurs­ery sys­tems up­on which com­mer­cial fish stocks de­pend.

“Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed fish­ing grounds un­der­mine the liveli­hoods of tens of thou­sands of small-scale fish­ers on both coasts, and a reef sys­tem dam­aged by oil can­not be re­built on a po­lit­i­cal time­line. In­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, the ab­sence of a func­tion­ing bi­lat­er­al en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing and re­sponse pro­to­col means that each in­ci­dent will be man­aged re­ac­tive­ly, through ac­cu­sa­tion and counter-ac­cu­sa­tion, rather than through the kind of joint rapid-re­sponse mech­a­nism that a shared sea de­mands.”

Fur­ther­more, he said both states have economies that are struc­tural­ly de­pen­dent on hy­dro­car­bon ex­trac­tion.

“The pol­lu­tion risk they now dis­pute is, in sig­nif­i­cant mea­sure, a prod­uct of the in­dus­try that sus­tains both of them. Any cred­i­ble long-term frame­work for man­ag­ing the Gulf of Paria its re­sources, its risks, its shared ecol­o­gy re­quires ex­act­ly the bi­lat­er­al trust that cur­rent geopol­i­tics has com­pre­hen­sive­ly de­stroyed.”

Prag­mat­ic re­la­tions

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told the Busi­ness Guardian that while the present Venezue­lan regime may not like T&T, they stand to ben­e­fit from en­er­gy deals and so they will con­tin­ue to sup­port deals like the lat­est one with Shell.

“I think that the sur­vivors of the Maduro regime have not for­got­ten the at­tacks and crit­i­cisms of them. They will go along with the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and sup­ply the gas as that is al­so ben­e­fi­cial for Venezuela but they want to con­vey to the T&T Gov­ern­ment that they were and still are not pleased with them. They have not en­ter­tained a vis­it from the an­nounced min­is­te­r­i­al team and they con­tin­ue to raise this oil spill is­sue. Those are signs of dis­plea­sure and most like­ly an in­di­ca­tion that the re­la­tion­ship would not move be­yond this on any gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment mat­ters.”