T&T may not reap the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits ex­pect­ed from the re­cent­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas agree­ments, as the com­mer­cial in­cen­tives of­fered to Shell and BP could ul­ti­mate­ly en­cour­age the com­pa­nies to di­rect gas to­wards lu­cra­tive Eu­ro­pean and Asian LNG mar­kets, rather than the coun­try’s strug­gling petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

That is the warn­ing from Venezue­lan pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer and en­er­gy an­a­lyst Dr Ein­stein Mil­lán Ar­cia, who in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian ar­gues that the eco­nom­ics of the agree­ments could leave T&T with in­suf­fi­cient lev­els of gas for lo­cal down­stream in­dus­tries, while in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies pur­sue sub­stan­tial­ly more prof­itable ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“In T&T, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is cel­e­brat­ing the sign­ing of these agree­ments as a per­son­al achieve­ment that will bring eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fits, with­out re­al­is­ing that the ul­ti­mate out­come of these agree­ments could ac­tu­al­ly be the op­po­site,” he said.