What hap­pens in Venezuela mat­ters to Trinidad and To­ba­go. What hap­pens in Guyana mat­ters to T&T. And what hap­pens be­tween these two coun­tries, one, our near­est off­shore neigh­bour with whom we are try­ing to work out busi­ness is­sues re­lat­ed to our nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion sur­vival; and the oth­er, our Cari­com broth­er and part­ner, in an in­sti­tu­tion that is one of the longest stand­ing in­te­gra­tion part­ner­ships in the world and the old­est in the de­vel­op­ing world—what hap­pens be­tween these coun­tries should more than mat­ter to T&T. And what hap­pens to T&T as we nav­i­gate this dif­fi­cult ter­rain will mat­ter to us but should mat­ter to the re­gion and the world as well.

Over the years since the be­gin­nings of Cari­com in 1973, the world has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and Venezuela and Guyana have lived through dra­mat­ic changes with­in their own na­tion­al bor­ders. T&T has ab­sorbed a num­ber of im­mi­grants from both coun­tries. Over decades, many Guyanese have mi­grat­ed here. Many are now cit­i­zens. And over the last decade, the mi­gra­tion from Venezuela to this coun­try has been sub­stan­tial. Many will be­come cit­i­zens.

Be­fore Hugo Chavez, Venezuela was a de­sir­able coun­try to which peo­ple from Spain, Italy and Por­tu­gal of­ten mi­grat­ed. Dur­ing Colom­bian crises, thou­sands mi­grat­ed to Venezuela from Colom­bia. Un­der Nico­las Maduro, the sit­u­a­tion was re­versed, as Venezue­lans walked over to the Colom­bian side. Venezue­lans are in Guyana in some num­bers now, as in­deed are Brazil­ians. Brazil and Guyana share a bor­der and have a road which joins them.

T&T, over gen­er­a­tions, has been home to peo­ple from every is­land in the Caribbean and in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Venezue­lans mi­grat­ed here and have since done well. This re­gion and hemi­sphere has from in­cep­tion been a place of the” min­gling of peo­ples.”

Guyana has been through some rough eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal pe­ri­ods. This has been true of Venezuela re­cent­ly and cur­rent­ly. T&T, through cy­cles of booms and busts, is in­to a bust cy­cle once more.

But Venezuela has the largest proven oil re­serves in he world. With peace, pros­per­i­ty, good gov­er­nance and sta­bil­i­ty, it can be an eco­nom­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful na­tion. Guyana has now found more oil than it ever thought it had. It is the fastest grow­ing econ­o­my in the world and will be rich, if it man­ages its wealth gen­er­at­ing rev­enues sen­si­bly. T&T can be a ma­jor play­er in the world in LNG for some time still, in spite of its cur­rent woes, but that is high­ly de­pen­dent on nat­ur­al gas from Drag­on and Lo­ran Man­a­tee. The T&T Gov­ern­ment this week made sig­nif­i­cant progress with the re­struc­tur­ing of own­er­ship of At­lantic LNG. But for those pos­si­bil­i­ties to be re­alised, Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas must come to NGC.

T&T with its decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in oil and en­er­gy can be a ma­jor play­er in en­er­gy ser­vices. Suri­name, French Guyana, Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos, plus Guyana and Venezuela; pos­si­bly al­so Colom­bia and Brazil, may all grow be­cause of oil and gas. But the re­gion needs to be peace­ful and sta­ble, and T&T has to line up its ducks with pre­ci­sion.

There is a mu­tu­al de­pen­den­cy that one needs to recog­nise, a di­ver­si­ty here that one needs to cel­e­brate and col­lec­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties that are with­in our col­lec­tive grasp to achieve.

One must not fail to see, how, with skill, so­phis­ti­ca­tion and a spir­it of col­lab­o­ra­tion, op­por­tu­ni­ties in the glob­al en­er­gy in­dus­try are wait­ing to be seized, if we could sum­mon the pres­ence of mind and the in­clu­sive vi­sion re­quired for suc­cess.

It might be true that the world prefers a green­er en­er­gy fu­ture, and that sig­nif­i­cant in­no­va­tions are tak­ing place to trans­form the en­er­gy in­dus­try glob­al­ly. But it is al­so true that Chi­na and In­dia, the two eco­nom­ic gi­ants of the de­vel­op­ing world, said they would need to mine coal for some time for their own de­vel­op­ment. And so, even though fos­sil fu­el de­mand may slow, de­mand for fos­sil fu­el will not dis­ap­pear any­time soon. Linked to re­sources in this re­gion are the pres­ence and in­ter­est of USA, Rus­sia, Chi­na and Iran in a fast al­ter­ing geopo­lit­i­cal are­na.

Maduro’s chest beat­ing and ag­gres­sion are linked to his per­son­al elec­toral trou­bles. Out­side en­e­my for lo­cal strength. Guyana has every­thing go­ing for it at the present time, in­clud­ing a boost in na­tion­al uni­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port.

T&T’s eco­nom­ic for­tunes are sink­ing, but, with care and thought, it can re­cov­er. Co­op­er­a­tion can bring pros­per­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty can re­deem the re­gion. But bel­liger­ent con­flict can fin­ish it. Bad pol­i­tics must not screw up every­thing. And poor judge­ment and stri­den­cy can bring the whole house down. A peace­ful, law­ful, res­o­lu­tion can be the door­way to mu­tu­al pros­per­i­ty.