Venezuela may be will­ing to en­ter­tain po­ten­tial part­ner­ships with the Caribbean, as the re­gion grap­ples with ris­ing elec­tric­i­ty costs and seeks to di­ver­si­fy its en­er­gy sources.

Car­o­la Her­rera-Napoleon, vice-min­is­ter in Venezuela’s Min­istry of Eco-So­cial­ism, said “yes” when asked whether there were op­por­tu­ni­ties to strength­en en­er­gy re­la­tion­ships with its Caribbean neigh­bours.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at COP31 in Türkiye, Her­rera-Napoleon was asked whether Venezuela could ex­pand its tra­di­tion­al role as an en­er­gy sup­pli­er to the Caribbean, mov­ing be­yond oil and gas co­op­er­a­tion to in­clude re­new­able en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment.

The ques­tion comes as sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, face high elec­tric­i­ty costs, with glob­al en­er­gy mar­ket volatil­i­ty, geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and de­pen­dence on im­port­ed fos­sil fu­els con­tin­u­ing to place pres­sure on con­sumers.

When asked about the po­ten­tial for re­new­able-en­er­gy part­ner­ships be­tween the Caribbean and Venezuela, she said, “Of course. Venezuela has a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties in this mo­ment. It’s a mo­ment to in­vest in Venezuela. The in­vest­ments can be in Venezuela. The im­por­tant thing for us is that while we have the oil re­serves, we are al­so a car­bon-neu­tral coun­try.”

Asked specif­i­cal­ly about op­por­tu­ni­ties for Trinidad and To­ba­go, which has long­stand­ing en­er­gy ties with Venezuela and is al­so seek­ing to ex­pand its re­new­able en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, Her­rera-Napoleon could not say.

She al­so stopped short of out­lin­ing spe­cif­ic re­new­able en­er­gy projects or mech­a­nisms through which such part­ner­ships could be de­vel­oped.

Venezuela has his­tor­i­cal­ly played a sig­nif­i­cant role in Caribbean en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty through ini­tia­tives such as Petro­caribe, which pro­vid­ed par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries with ac­cess to Venezue­lan oil un­der pref­er­en­tial fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments.

Her­rera-Napoleon main­tained that Venezuela’s en­er­gy iden­ti­ty ex­tend­ed be­yond its sub­stan­tial pe­tro­le­um re­sources, high­light­ing the coun­try’s re­new­able en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty and ex­ten­sive for­est cov­er.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil re­serves, but the vice-min­is­ter said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent of the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion came from what she de­scribed as clean en­er­gy sources, in­clud­ing hy­dro­elec­tric­i­ty, wind and so­lar pow­er.

“For all the peo­ple, Venezuela is the first coun­try with the biggest re­serve of oil. But we are al­so a nat­ur­al car­bon coun­try. We have a lot of green, a lot of forests, and we al­so have the en­er­gy of our coun­try is clean en­er­gy,” she said.

Asked whether rev­enues gen­er­at­ed from oil and gas could be chan­nelled in­to ex­pand­ing re­new­able en­er­gy projects, Her­rera-Napoleon said the ben­e­fits of the coun­try’s pe­tro­le­um re­sources were in­tend­ed to sup­port so­cial de­vel­op­ment.

“It’s a so­cial de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try. That’s the rea­son that we use the ben­e­fit of the oil,” she said.

Venezuela’s par­tic­i­pa­tion at COP31 in­cludes a na­tion­al pavil­ion show­cas­ing its en­vi­ron­men­tal and en­er­gy pro­file, with the del­e­ga­tion seek­ing to high­light the coun­try’s nat­ur­al re­sources along­side its po­si­tion as a ma­jor oil pro­duc­er.

For Trinidad and To­ba­go, the prospect of ex­pand­ing re­gion­al en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion in­to re­new­ables could pro­vide an­oth­er di­men­sion to an al­ready es­tab­lished re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, al­though the vice-min­is­ter’s com­ments stopped short of iden­ti­fy­ing con­crete pro­pos­als.