The Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment is yet to re­lease de­tails of the new li­cence to de­vel­op the Drag­on gas field, but un­der the orig­i­nal 2023 agree­ment, Venezuela was set to re­ceive near­ly half of the in­come from the project.

The then agree­ment stat­ed that if Venezuela’s per­cent­age share of gross in­come from the nat­ur­al gas field fell be­low 45 per cent, “a spe­cial vari­able con­sid­er­a­tion in ad­di­tion to that al­ready es­tab­lished in this ar­ti­cle will be ap­plied”. The Drag­on gas field, lo­cat­ed off the coast of Venezuela, has proven re­serves of some 4.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet of gas.

Britain’s multi­na­tion­al Shell and T&T’s Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) were re­quired to pay Venezuela no less than 45 per cent of gross rev­enues from the Drag­on gas pro­duc­tion project off Venezuela’s coast. These terms were out­lined in the 2023 li­cence agree­ment.