Three months af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared the Drag­on gas deal “dead” —and five months af­ter re­vok­ing two Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences to ex­plore the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin fields in Venezue­lan wa­ters—the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment has re­versed its de­ci­sion.

The de­vel­op­ment came fol­low­ing a high-lev­el meet­ing be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio at the State De­part­ment in Wash­ing­ton, DC, yes­ter­day.

In a video up­loaded to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Face­book page short­ly af­ter the meet­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the talks as “very im­por­tant dis­cus­sions for bi­lat­er­al in­ter­ests” and hint­ed that pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments would be an­nounced soon.

In a state­ment is­sued by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter soon af­ter­wards, it con­firmed that the US gov­ern­ment now sup­ports Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ef­forts to de­vel­op cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bon re­sources.

“Sub­se­quent to the meet­ing, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go was in­formed that the Sec­re­tary of State sup­ports the ap­proval of the rel­e­vant Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences to be­gin dis­cus­sions to­ward de­vel­op­ing its cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bons,” the state­ment read.

The re­lease said the sup­port was se­cured dur­ing talks be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ru­bio fo­cused on mat­ters of mu­tu­al in­ter­est af­fect­ing both coun­tries, in­clud­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, and eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty. Ru­bio re­port­ed­ly praised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship and reaf­firmed the long-stand­ing part­ner­ship be­tween the Unit­ed States and Trinidad and To­ba­go, ground­ed in his­toric ties and shared re­gion­al goals. (See box)

Con­tact­ed hours af­ter the meet­ing, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal laud­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s ef­forts, while crit­i­cis­ing for­mer prime min­is­ters Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young, who al­so served as en­er­gy min­is­ter.

“It is a great day for Trinidad and To­ba­go!! Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­liv­ered the most telling achieve­ment in ob­tain­ing the US gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for our re­newed pro­pos­al to res­ur­rect the Drag­on project, which died at the hands of Stu­art Young and Kei­th Row­ley!! In four short months, the Prime Min­is­ter has de­liv­ered a pro­found and most re­mark­able con­tri­bu­tion to our eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery!!” Mooni­lal said via What­sApp.

Re­ver­sal of ap­proach

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had ex­pressed lit­tle op­ti­mism for the Drag­on fas project fol­low­ing the swear­ing-in of her Cab­i­net on May 4, af­ter their sweep­ing vic­to­ry over the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing to the me­dia then, she said: “The Drag­on gas is dead. We’d be fool­ish to not look else­where and, in fact, we should have start­ed that search long ago. We should not have put every­thing in­to the Drag­on gas. That is dead. It is dead. They (PNM) kept it alive for ten years and we couldn’t do that in ten years, you’re not go­ing to do it now.”

She in­di­cat­ed that her Gov­ern­ment would fo­cus on op­por­tu­ni­ties else­where in the Caribbean, in­clud­ing Grena­da, Guyana, Suri­name, and To­ba­go, where ex­plo­ration work had be­gun dur­ing her pre­vi­ous term.

“Let’s look right here in the Cari­com—as I men­tioned Grena­da, Guyana, Suri­name. And, of course, in To­ba­go, we had be­gun work when I was last in of­fice, look­ing at To­ba­go to see if we are so close by there could pos­si­bly be oil and gas in To­ba­go’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­firmed that Ru­bio had not raised the Drag­on gas deal dur­ing a tele­phone call on May 3, re­it­er­at­ing “not at all, Drag­on gas is dead.” On whether she would pur­sue the deal with Venezuela, she added: “Not at this point in time. Who knows, in the full­ness of time, all things are pos­si­ble. But at this point in time, I am look­ing at the Cari­com. I’m look­ing at our own cousins, broth­ers and sis­ters in the Cari­com.”

US li­cences and

project back­ground

Yes­ter­day’s de­ci­sion by Ru­bio comes al­most five months af­ter then-prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced on April 8, 20 days be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, that the US had re­voked two OFAC li­cences for off­shore gas projects with Venezuela.

These li­cences, which had al­lowed Shell, BP, and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to plan projects ex­empt from US sanc­tions on Venezuela, ini­tial­ly had a May 27 dead­line for ac­tiv­i­ties to wind down.

Trinidad and To­ba­go first re­ceived an OFAC li­cence for the Drag­on gas field on Oc­to­ber 31, 2023, fol­lowed by a sec­ond li­cence for the Cocuina-Man­akin field on May 31, 2024, both valid for two years.

The Drag­on field, grant­ed to Shell by Venezuela in 2023 un­der a 30-year li­cence, holds an es­ti­mat­ed four tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas re­serves. The project was ex­pect­ed to sup­ply gas to Trinidad for con­ver­sion in­to liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG).

US ap­proval is nec­es­sary be­cause the com­pa­nies must ne­go­ti­ate and plan de­vel­op­ment in com­pli­ance with Wash­ing­ton’s sanc­tions on Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor and its state-owned com­pa­ny, PDVSA.

The re­newed sup­port sig­nals a po­ten­tial re­open­ing of di­a­logue on projects that had been con­sid­ered stalled un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant shift in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy diplo­ma­cy.