A planned Gov­ern­ment del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela for en­er­gy talks is ex­pect­ed to be de­layed fol­low­ing the re­cent 7.2 and 7.5 mag­ni­tude earth­quake tragedies in that coun­try.

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said prepa­ra­tions for the vis­it re­main un­der re­view as the Gov­ern­ment as­sess­es de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela fol­low­ing the earth­quakes, which caused loss of life and wide­spread dis­rup­tion to in­fra­struc­ture and es­sen­tial ser­vices. The dis­as­ter has trig­gered emer­gency re­sponse op­er­a­tions and re­newed re­gion­al at­ten­tion on the sta­bil­i­ty of on­go­ing diplo­mat­ic and tech­ni­cal en­gage­ments with Cara­cas.

The tim­ing of the pro­posed mis­sion is al­so un­fold­ing against the back­drop of ear­li­er ten­sions in en­er­gy re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela, which af­fect­ed mo­men­tum on as­pects of cross-bor­der co­op­er­a­tion and up­stream en­er­gy dis­cus­sions in re­cent months. De­spite this, both coun­tries have main­tained tech­ni­cal and diplo­mat­ic con­tact on en­er­gy-re­lat­ed mat­ters.