En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day led a del­e­ga­tion from this coun­try to Cara­cas to meet with Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Venezuela Del­cy Ro­dríguez in the first high-lev­el vis­it there fol­low­ing the Unit­ed States’ de­ci­sion to waive sanc­tions against that coun­try and clear­ing the way for the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on Gas field.

Video from Venezue­lan state me­dia VTV showed T&T’s am­bas­sador to Venezuela Ed­mund Dil­lon, Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Mark Lo­quan along with Venezuela’s oil min­is­ter Tareck El Ais­sa­mi in the meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the state me­dia, the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to deep­en strate­gic re­la­tions and boost the co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Venezuela and T&T.

“Both coun­tries have his­tor­i­cal­ly pro­mot­ed al­liances in the sec­tor en­er­gy and gas as the en­gine of its econ­o­my the eco­nom­ic-com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries is framed with­in the strate­gic co­op­er­a­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of projects in the field of hy­dro­car­bons,” it stat­ed.

“The meet­ing takes place as part of the Bo­li­var­i­an Peace Diplo­ma­cy and the oc­ca­sion is pro­pi­tious to re­view the ties of sol­i­dar­i­ty, mu­tu­al re­spect and bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween both neigh­bour­ing na­tions,” it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to VTV, Venezuela has “rat­i­fied its will to strength­en the co­op­er­a­tion and broth­er­hood agree­ments with the neigh­bour­ing Caribbean re­pub­lic, for the ben­e­fit of both peo­ples and na­tions.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Fri­day told Par­lia­ment his gov­ern­ment had been in touch with Venezuela and the first meet­ing to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions had been set up.

On whether the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment has of­fi­cial­ly agreed to the terms and con­di­tions stip­u­lat­ed by the US, Row­ley said, “This is a mat­ter that re­quires state-to-state com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the first hur­dle has been crossed.”

He said the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment has made no pub­lic state­ments spe­cif­ic to T&T ‘s use of the li­cence grant­ed by the US.

“We are in touch with Venezuela, we have meet­ings sched­uled and ne­go­ti­a­tions ahead of us there­fore I can say noth­ing fur­ther at this time.”

In a broad­cast on Thurs­day, Pres­i­dent of Venezuela Nico­las Maduro con­demned the de­ci­sion by the Unit­ed States to grant li­cens­es to coun­tries and com­pa­nies to re­sume tak­ing crude oil from Cara­cas on the con­di­tion no funds be paid to Venezuela.

“They tell a coun­try it has per­mis­sion to ne­go­ti­ate with Venezuela, but it can­not pay in dol­lars or any form of cash. It must pay with food or prod­ucts,” Maduro said, adding “that is colo­nial­ism.”

The US li­cense means Trinidad and To­ba­go will be al­lowed to re­sume do­ing busi­ness with Venezue­lan heav­i­ly sanc­tioned state-run oil com­pa­ny PDVSA, even though the Maduro regime in Cara­cas will not be per­mit­ted to re­ceive any cash pay­ments from this project.

“It is a joke to sov­er­eign coun­tries. I call on sov­er­eign coun­tries and gov­ern­ments in Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean to de­nounce this colo­nial mod­el. We do not ac­cept it, we will go on our way,” he said with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

PDVSA has found re­serves of 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet (TCF) in the Drag­on field, on the Venezue­lan side of its mar­itime bor­der with Trinidad. The project was head­ed for pro­duc­tion over a decade ago, but stalled over lack of cap­i­tal and part­ners, as well as sanc­tions.