The T&T/Venezue­lan Drag­on Gas plan has not yet been signed, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan told Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. He said

a gas sales agree­ment which would be the legal­ly bind­ing agree­ment is ex­pect­ed to be signed in the com­ing months.

The min­is­ter's re­ply caused an up­roar from the Op­po­si­tion bench­es which had been seek­ing to as­cer­tain how firm the project is for T&T giv­en the cri­sis in Venezuela. Op­po­si­tion MPs howled in sur­prise when Khan said the legal­ly bind­ing doc­u­ment is yet to be signed.

Khan said the T&T Gov­ern­ment signed a Heads of Agree­ment doc­u­ment with the Nico­las Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion on De­cem­ber 5, 2016, and a Term |Sheet was signed on Au­gust 25, 2018. He said the com­ple­tion time­frame for the project is 12 to 18 months and the last thing to be signed will be the gas sales agree­ment, and first gas is pro­ject­ed for 2021.

Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal then asked if there is a legal­ly bind­ing doc­u­ment to claim that gas will be ob­tained at some point. Khan said in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies couldn't sign com­mer­cial agree­ments with­out the Heads of Agree­ment doc­u­ment. He said the gas sales agree­ment is the re­al bind­ing doc­u­ment.

Al­so ad­dress­ing Par­lia­ment was Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young who con­firmed that the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses would be speak­ing with his Venezue­lan coun­ter­part on strength­en­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty in light of the cri­sis af­fect­ing T&T's clos­est neigh­bour.