Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior po­lit­i­cal re­porter

The Drag­on nat­ur­al gas agree­ment with Venezuela in­cludes al­lo­ca­tions for do­mes­tic gas as well as LNG. The agree­ment is not on­ly for the pur­suit of Drag­on field gas, but de­tails can’t be giv­en due to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty terms, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate on the 2024 Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Young al­so said Gov­ern­ment hopes to sign the fi­nal agree­ment on the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic, the liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) in Point Fortin with­in the next month.

The min­is­ter spent half of his con­tri­bu­tion crit­i­cis­ing the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion’s man­age­ment of the en­er­gy sec­tor and list­ing the achieve­ments of the PNM Gov­ern­ment.

Com­ment­ing on Op­po­si­tion ques­tions about the Drag­on field agree­ment with Venezuela, Young point­ed out: “Trinidad and To­ba­go isn’t the on­ly place in­ter­est­ed in Venezuela.

“When I was in Venezuela a cou­ple of weeks ago at PDVSA head­quar­ters, as I walked out of the board­room to strate­gise, there were lit­er­al­ly a num­ber of multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies meet­ing them. There are oth­er coun­tries in the world want­i­ng to do busi­ness with Venezuela, but what we’ve done is man­age the re­la­tion­ship to en­sure we’re the pri­or­i­ty.”

Young said a com­mer­cial term sheet was ne­go­ti­at­ed and signed in 2018.

He dis­missed Op­po­si­tion queries about the many agree­ments signed, point­ing out that this was “be­cause the US put sanc­tions!”.

Young added: “And that’s what stopped it oth­er­wise the Drag­on gas would have been in Trinidad and To­ba­go since 2020! The US put sanc­tions and stopped the project.”

He al­so re­called that the Op­po­si­tion wrote the US seek­ing sanc­tions on him and the Prime Min­is­ter “be­cause they were sup­port­ing ‘Pres­i­dent Guai­do’ and ask­ing why I let Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Thank God I did!”

Young said the agree­ment that was signed be­tween him and Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple’s Pow­er of Pe­tro­le­um was for the pro­mo­tion of joint projects in the gas hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor.

“And it is not on­ly for Drag­on but al­so as part of that agree­ment ... I can­not get in­to the terms of it since, as hap­pens with all en­er­gy sec­tor com­mer­cial agree­ments, there are terms of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty,” he said

He ex­plained this was be­cause if many par­ties were ne­go­ti­at­ing, Venezuela wouldn’t want each par­ty to know the terms of the deal.

“Drag­on is well on the way,” he de­clared.

Young said the agree­ment is not on­ly for the pur­suit of gas, dis­miss­ing claims it was on­ly for LNG.

“There’s an al­lo­ca­tion for do­mes­tic gas! And we’ve had a num­ber of meet­ings and we’re now ne­go­ti­at­ing the pric­ing,” he said.

On oth­er is­sues, the min­is­ter said the Man­a­tee field, which is part of the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field be­tween T&T and Venezuela, was part of a uni­ti­sa­tion agree­ment but when the Gov­ern­ment saw what was oc­cur­ring as a re­sult of the US sanc­tions, they ne­go­ti­at­ed and “got Pres­i­dent Maduro to al­low us to pro­duce the Man­a­tee field, so that is go­ing to hap­pen”.

“And it’s on­ly nat­ur­al that Lo­ran will fol­low. In my re­cent dis­cus­sions with the Venezue­lans, and in par­tic­u­lar Pres­i­dent Maduro and Vice Pres­i­dent Ro­driguez, they’re look­ing at Lo­ran com­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Young said as the Drag­on, Man­a­tee and Ca­lyp­so arrange­ments come on stream, com­pa­nies like Hal­ibur­ton and oth­ers that left will re­turn.

On the At­lantic LNG agree­ment, he said: “Thou­sands of pages are now be­ing re­viewed to a re­struc­tured At­lantic LNG that would mean bet­ter share­hold­ing for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We al­so man­aged to ne­go­ti­ate third-par­ty ac­cess to gas so that means that not on­ly NGC, Shell and BP can bring gas to AL­NG in the fu­ture but oth­ers can as well.”

He said that now presents op­por­tu­ni­ties for deep­wa­ter, Wood­side, re­gion­al gas and cross-bor­der gas.

Oth­er en­deav­ours out­lined by Young in­clude a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing and meet­ings with Suri­name, the Lara so­lar project, the pur­suit of wind for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and the first green hy­dro­gen project.