Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez an­nounced to­day that the gov­ern­ment has pro­posed to Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro the im­me­di­ate de­nun­ci­a­tion of the En­er­gy Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The agree­ment, signed in 2015 with a ten-year va­lid­i­ty and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­newed ear­li­er this year for an ad­di­tion­al five years, gov­erns a wide range of joint en­er­gy ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment and treat­ment of shared gas de­posits, in­fra­struc­ture projects, and the mon­e­ti­za­tion of shared hy­dro­car­bon re­sources.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence, Ro­dríguez stat­ed that the di­rec­tive was is­sued joint­ly by Venezuela’s Min­istry of En­er­gy and state oil com­pa­ny PDVSA. She ex­plained that Ar­ti­cle 13, num­ber 3, of the agree­ment grants ei­ther par­ty the au­thor­i­ty to for­mal­ly re­nounce the deal. She de­scribed the agree­ment as “very broad” and said the de­nun­ci­a­tion would be a re­spon­si­ble mea­sure to pro­tect Venezuela’s na­tion­al in­ter­ests.