JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

The Drag­on Gas Agree­ment of­fers ben­e­fits for Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Unit­ed States, and Venezuela, ad­vanc­ing re­gion­al part­ner­ship, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, and eco­nom­ic growth, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said.

The PM’s as­ser­tion fol­lows the Gov­ern­ment se­cur­ing an OFAC li­cence, which Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed as a “fresh start­ing point” in on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The li­cence came af­ter her re­cent meet­ing with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Wash­ing­ton, where dis­cus­sions fo­cused on deep­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion and ad­vanc­ing mu­tu­al in­ter­ests.

“I wish to ex­press my sin­cere grat­i­tude to Sec­re­tary Ru­bio for his ef­forts in en­sur­ing that this li­cence was ap­proved and for help­ing to re­open this crit­i­cal path­way for progress,” the Prime Min­is­ter said. “This is yet an­oth­er ma­jor vic­to­ry for Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­flect­ing our gov­ern­ment’s ded­i­ca­tion, diplo­ma­cy, and de­ter­mi­na­tion.”

On Thurs­day, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so met with se­nior rep­re­sen­ta­tives from BPTT, Pro­man, and Wood­side to dis­cuss col­lab­o­ra­tion and ex­plore new av­enues with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor, which she de­scribed as the back­bone of the na­tion­al econ­o­my and a key dri­ver of de­vel­op­ment.

“These strate­gic en­gage­ments are not on­ly about sus­tain­ing pro­duc­tion but al­so about cre­at­ing new path­ways for in­no­va­tion, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, and sus­tain­able growth,” she said.

“By main­tain­ing these vi­tal in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships, my Gov­ern­ment is en­sur­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to har­ness its en­er­gy re­sources strate­gi­cal­ly and re­spon­si­bly,” she af­firmed, “se­cur­ing a stronger and more pros­per­ous fu­ture for all.”