Since the Jan­u­ary an­nounce­ment that the Unit­ed States had grant­ed T&T a li­cence to pur­sue the Drag­on Field gas deal with Venezuela, sev­er­al fac­tors have giv­en rise to doubts about whether an agree­ment will be re­alised.

Above all is the US gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to pro­hib­it cash pay­ments for the gas, a de­ci­sion Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has called “colo­nial­ism.”

If there were to be any ev­i­dence that the US was mind­ed to change its po­si­tion, it wouldn’t be com­ing from the US State De­part­ment, whose Un­der Sec­re­tary for Eco­nom­ic Growth, En­er­gy and the En­vi­ron­ment, Jose Fer­nan­dez, re­in­forced to Reuters news agency yes­ter­day, that sanc­tions against Venezuela are not go­ing to be eased any fur­ther.

Reuters, which spoke to Fer­nan­dez at a CER­AWeek en­er­gy con­fer­ence in Hous­ton, quot­ed him as say­ing the re­cent State De­part­ment li­cences—the one giv­en to T&T and one ear­li­er al­low­ing Chevron Corp to ex­pand op­er­a­tions and ex­port Venezue­lan oil to the US—do not in­di­cate a turn in pol­i­cy to­wards Venezuela.

This ap­pears to nul­li­fy hopes of T&T re­turn­ing to the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion to change the terms of the li­cence agree­ment if the Gov­ern­ment had any in­ten­tions of do­ing so.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne’s meet­ing with US Sec­re­tary of State An­tho­ny Blinken in Wash­in­ton DC yes­ter­day, broad­ly dis­cussed gen­er­al in­ter­ests be­tween the US, T&T and Cari­com.

In set­ting the stage for the talks, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter Browne, in his open­ing re­marks, said en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty was among the top pri­or­i­ties of the re­gion.

We ex­pect Min­is­ter Browne to re­port to the na­tion on whether the dis­cus­sions went any fur­ther in­to the Drag­on Field agree­ment and if any progress was made.

That meet­ing aside, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young has al­ready in­di­cat­ed he will meet with US of­fi­cials in Hous­ton this month to dis­cuss the li­cence agree­ment.

But giv­en Un­der Sec­re­tary Fer­nan­dez’s po­si­tion yes­ter­day, the suc­cess of this deal seems more hinged on T&T’s abil­i­ty to con­vince the Venezue­lan regime to set­tle the deal on non-mon­e­tary terms.

What­ev­er Min­is­ter Young dis­cussed on his two pre­vi­ous trips to Venezuela, he has kept close to his chest.

This is why we look to­ward the of­fi­cial start of for­mal Drag­on Field talks with­in the next cou­ple weeks, when Min­is­ter Young leads a tech­ni­cal team to Cara­cas.

We’ve tak­en note of his state­ment at the last post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, that among the ini­tial doc­u­ments to be signed with Venezuela are con­fi­den­tial agree­ments to pro­tect in­for­ma­tion shared by the par­ties.

How­ev­er, the coun­try can­not be asked to hold its breath for much longer and Min­is­ter Young must en­sure cit­i­zens are kept up-to-date on mat­ters not cov­ered un­der the con­fi­den­tial agree­ment.

We are all in­vest­ed in this, with the knowl­edge that a re­sul­tant pro­duc­tion of around 150 mil­lion cu­bic feet of gas dai­ly can sig­nif­i­cant­ly turn T&T’s for­tunes around.

The suc­cess of the talks with US of­fi­cials that led to the li­cence ap­proval de­served­ly earned this Gov­ern­ment a prop­er round of ap­plause, but it is the abil­i­ty to favourably nav­i­gate through these up­com­ing talks with Venezuela that will earn the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-regime a re­sound­ing stand­ing ova­tion.