For­mer prime min­is­ter and en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic about the sta­tus of the US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence—a crit­i­cal reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ment for any en­gage­ment with Venezuela’s state-owned gas re­serves.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Young, the MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, ques­tioned whether Gov­ern­ment had in fact se­cured a con­firmed OFAC li­cence, de­spite pub­lic state­ments sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise.

“So no OFAC li­cence in hand, even though you said you ob­tained an OFAC li­cence for Drag­on when you ar­rived in T&T on Wednes­day night,” Young wrote, al­leg­ing that Gov­ern­ment was mis­lead­ing the pub­lic about the le­gal and diplo­mat­ic sta­tus of the project.

“There­fore the UNC Gov­ern­ment does not know the terms of what they are be­ing giv­en to work with by OFAC and that is on­ly one part of the equa­tion be­cause Venezuela owns the Drag­on gas field,” Young said.

Speak­ing at the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Ar­ti­fi­cial Limb Fit­ment Camp at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar as­sured that the li­cence should be grant­ed soon as she added it was a one step in a two-step process.

She al­so re­mind­ed the me­dia that Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio had stat­ed in a re­lease that he had ap­proved the OFAC li­cence.

In his post Young said the Gov­ern­ment was how­ev­er, de­pend­ing on the en­er­gy com­pa­ny Shell to ne­go­ti­ate with Venezuela (which owns the gas) on be­half of T&T.

“Then you are count­ing on Shell to talk to Venezuela as the own­ers of the gas and ex­pect Shell to ne­go­ti­ate for T&T? It is the Gov­ern­ment’s du­ty to pro­tect T&T and to lead and get the best terms for T&T you can­not count on a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny to do that. So you sell­ing out once again just like you did be­tween 2010-2015 when you gave away all our gas rev­enues un­til 2025 with in­cen­tives,” Young stat­ed.

He fur­ther claimed the Prime Min­is­ter was try­ing to mis­lead the pub­lic by say­ing she and her min­is­ters have nev­er used “harsh and dis­re­spect­ful lan­guage” to­ward Venezuela’s lead­er­ship.

“Then you gas light the pop­u­la­tion and say no harsh and dis­re­spect­ful lan­guage has been used by your­self as Prime Min­is­ter and many of your min­is­ters in at­tack­ing the Venezue­lan lead­er­ship over the years and even over the past few weeks, blam­ing the me­dia for re­port­ing what you and your min­is­ters said. Re­al­ly Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar?,” Young said.

He al­so point­ed out that the Prime Min­is­ter re­fused to clear­ly state whether she recog­nised Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s le­git­i­mate pres­i­dent, de­spite her clear pre­vi­ous po­si­tion.

“Last­ly, you refuse to an­swer the me­dia when asked if you recog­nise Pres­i­dent Maduro as the Pres­i­dent of Venezuela. Your po­si­tion is clear for years so why are you duck­ing now?” Young said.

He end­ed his post by call­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions a “cha­rade, hypocrisy” and a sign that they be­lieve cit­i­zens “are not in­tel­li­gent”.

On De­cem­ber 21, 2023, the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment is­sued a 30-year li­cence to the NGC (Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny) and Shell to de­vel­op and ex­port nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on gas field to T&T.

The OFAC played a key role in grant­i­ng this li­cence un­der the then Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Three weeks be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the US Gov­ern­ment can­celled the OFAC li­cence it had grant­ed.