Amidst the protests and po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty in Venezuela fol­low­ing the re­cent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, its gas agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go will go for­ward.

This was con­firmed by Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day as he con­fi­dent­ly as­sured that all the state’s on­go­ing en­er­gy projects will con­tin­ue.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the largest so­lar park lo­cat­ed in a Caribbean air­port, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day, Young said, “The re­cent projects that we have suc­ceed­ed with, right next door with Venezuela, Drag­on (gas deal), Cocuina (Cocuina-Man­akin cross-bor­der gas field), de­vel­op­ing Man­a­tee (gas field), I just marked the spot to say we will con­tin­ue to do these projects for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“Our econ­o­my is based on oil and gas, and we are com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing it and to earn­ing the rev­enue streams to be able to pro­vide de­cent stan­dards of liv­ing for our cit­i­zens but the dif­fer­ence with Trinidad and To­ba­go is we are go­ing to do it in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner.” He added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Young said the more re­new­ables that can be built on­to our na­tion­al grid, the more mol­e­cules of gas we will sell.

Speak­ing of oth­er en­er­gy projects on the way, which will aid the de­vel­op­ment of a clean­er and green­er Trinidad and To­ba­go, Young said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly con­struct­ing in Brechin Cas­tle in the cen­tral of Trinidad, the largest so­lar util­i­ty-scale pow­er gen­er­at­ing so­lar project in the Caribbean re­gion. It’s about 90.2 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty that would feed in­to our grid, Project Lara.”

This, he added, will earn rev­enue for our econ­o­my which will pay for free ed­u­ca­tion, health and oth­er ameni­ties af­ford­ed to cit­i­zens.

He said the Cab­i­net has al­so ap­proved the build­ing of a pi­lot project for green hy­dro­gen.

And, the next fo­cus will be wind en­er­gy.