Oc­to­ber re­opened a chap­ter many in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­lieved had stalled in­def­i­nite­ly—the Drag­on Gas deal. Once tout­ed as a life­line for the coun­try’s en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, the deal re­turned to the cen­tre of po­lit­i­cal de­bate. It came as the na­tion grap­pled with de­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and mount­ing pres­sure on its in­dus­tri­al base.

The Gov­ern­ment sig­nalled re­newed en­gage­ment with the Unit­ed States over the cross-bor­der gas arrange­ment at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Nine days in­to Oc­to­ber, the Unit­ed States of­fi­cial­ly grant­ed a six-month Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence au­tho­ris­ing the trans­ac­tions nec­es­sary for ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela to joint­ly ex­plore the Drag­on Gas field.

Shell sig­nalled its readi­ness to re­sume prepara­to­ry work, but the op­ti­mism proved short-lived. De­spite the OFAC li­cence, Venezuela made clear it was not pre­pared to budge on key terms, while geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions rapid­ly eclipsed tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions. As the month wore on, Drag­on be­came en­tan­gled in a broad­er diplo­mat­ic fall­out that would ul­ti­mate­ly de­rail the project once more.