While wel­com­ing news that Trinidad and To­ba­go is set to re­ceive 1.7 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Lo­ran field, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AM­CHAM), Ni­rad Tewarie, warned that so­cial and po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sion could un­der­mine the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly cap­i­talise on the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing short­ly af­ter En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal an­nounced in Par­lia­ment that the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela had grant­ed Shell a li­cence to de­vel­op the off­shore Lo­ran field, Tewarie de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as a ma­jor break­through for the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that na­tion­al uni­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion would be es­sen­tial if T&T has to re­alise the full eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.