This country has a Plan B should the Venezuelan Dragon gas deal stall.
That’s the word from outgoing Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley.
Dr. Rowley and his administration had secured a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the US Department of the Treasury to enter an arrangement that will allow this country access to Venezuela’s Dragon gas field. But with the United States President Donald Trump saying he intends to roll back deals completed by the Joseph Biden administration regarding Venezuela, Dr. Rowley said all this country’s economic eggs are not in one basket.
“Plan B is that we are seeking to extract every resource that is available to us within our border. That’s Plan B. And that is why in the area of hydrocarbons we are out in the deep water, we are on land, and we are in the shallow water trying to get all that is in our border.”
The Prime Minister indicated T&T has several partners on the South American continent.
“The Guyanese and the Surinamese have confirmed supplies, building up their reserves. They’re looking for market. We’ve gone to them. We’ve made arrangements with them where once it’s economically sound and we could get their agreement, sometime in the distant future, they could look in our direction.”
Dr. Rowley said in addition to these energy prospects, other parts of the economy also hold promise.
“Plan B is we don’t only rely on oil and gas, but we do everything else that we can do, right, which is getting into manufacturing. That’s why we built the most modern manufacturing park down there in Forres Park now, to add to all the parks that we have.”
The Prime Minister also pointed out that in the past, when energy prices were down, the country did not collapse but was able to survive and rally on, as it will again.