With local reporters barred from entering the room to witness or ask questions about an agreement between the governments of Trinidad and Tobago’s and Venezuela to process and export natural gas from Venezuela’s Dragon gas field, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said the details of the deal are “confidential”.
The secret deal will allow Trinidad and Tobago to access gas through a direct line from Venezuela through a joint venture between energy giant Shell, the Venezuela state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA) and local company National Gas Company (NGC), which will create the infrastructure.
Current US Treasury Department sanctions imposed on Venezuela, among other matters, prohibit transactions by a US person or within the US related to the sale, transfer, assignment, or pledging as collateral by the government of Venezuela of any equity interest in any entity in which it has a 50 percent or greater ownership interest.
In the absence of any detail, it is not known if the new agreement is an attempt to bypass US sanctions and designed to avoid the US banking system entirely, not an easy task in the energy industry.
Shell’s pipelines, including those in the North Coast Marine Acreage, will be used to transport Dragon’s gas to the Hibiscus platform off the northwest coast of Trinidad, some 11 miles (18 kilometers) away from the gas field. The Hibiscus platform is jointly owned by the Trinidad and Tobago government and Shell.
The signing of the agreement took place at the Placio de Miraflores in Caracas, with Trinidad and Tobago’s Cabinet ministers there as witnesses, including minister of energy, Franklin Khan; minister of foreign and CARICOM affairs, Denis Moses; minister of finance, Alyson West; minister of national security Stuart Young; and minister of sport Shamfa Cudjoe, as well as executives from Shell and NGC and Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his officials.
