Gail Alexan­der

With En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young sched­uled to trav­el to Venezuela this week for talks on the Drag­on Gas Field deal, Gov­ern­ment must give an­swers to lin­ger­ing ques­tions on the is­sue, in­clud­ing whether oil gi­ant Shell will see it prof­itable to han­dle the project for a mere two years.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress whip David Lee raised these points at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain.

Lee not­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made the Drag­on Field an­nounce­ment on Jan­u­ary 24, giv­ing T&T hope there would be ben­e­fits soon.

“That’s why I asked the ques­tion in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day on first gas but the Prime Min­is­ter said it was ‘mis­chie­vous’.”

Lee queried why Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment with­out do­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions first.

Not­ing that the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence had oc­curred the same week the an­nounce­ment was made, Lee won­dered if Row­ley came to change the dis­cus­sion, since noth­ing was hap­pen­ing in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

He not­ed that Young was now go­ing this week to Venezuela to ne­go­ti­ate.

“Is this an­oth­er pub­lic re­la­tions stunt he’s go­ing to at­tend, to give the im­pres­sion that some ne­go­ti­a­tion is oc­cur­ring af­ter the horse has bolt­ed from the sta­ble? Maybe the Prime Min­is­ter was think­ing he was pre­ma­ture with that re­lease on Jan­u­ary 24, be­cause since then to now, there’s so many ques­tions to be asked, in­clud­ing about the op­er­a­tors, Shell,” Lee said.

Lee asked the fol­low­ing:

• Whether en­er­gy gi­ant Shell would risk fund­ing a mil­lion-dol­lar project that one may not know if or when it would pro­duce gas at the end of the two-year li­cence—not know­ing if the US Gov­ern­ment would re­new the li­cence af­ter that pe­ri­od.

• If Shell does it, will it have a gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee and if it doesn’t ma­te­ri­alise at the end of the two years, if the NGC picks up the li­a­bil­i­ty if it fails.

• What is the ex­po­sure to the Gov­ern­ment and tax­pay­ers.

Lee added, “I’m sure Min­is­ter Young, when he re­turns from Venezuela, will come and tell us he did a new con­ga line dance with Pres­i­dent Maduro and his team and every­thing will be nice with T&T, but we’ll al­ways hold this Gov­ern­ment in check con­cern­ing our en­er­gy sec­tor.”

Lee called for Row­ley to tell the “re­al sto­ry” on the project, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter a Reuters sto­ry quot­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro com­plain­ing about the US’ cash­less au­tho­ri­sa­tion of the li­cence.

Last week, 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 are 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. That is colo­nial­ism,” Maduro said.

Maduro added that the US was try­ing to dic­tate how to do busi­ness with Venezuela’s state and pri­vate com­pa­nies.

“It is a joke to sov­er­eign coun­tries. I call 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.

Yes­ter­day, Lee said there were still too ques­tions sur­round­ing how the deal with work.

“Gov­ern­ment lacks an­swers, di­rec­tion and ab­sence of any of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment in the last 12 days...they’re car­ry­ing T&T down the same old road with this Drag­on deal as they did in 2018.”

Lee, who al­so said 50 per cent of scrap iron op­er­a­tors come from his Pointe-a-Pierre con­stituen­cy, called on Gov­ern­ment to open up the sec­tor for peo­ple to feed their fam­i­lies.