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Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend gas agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go has prompt­ed calls for calm, diplo­ma­cy, and re­newed eco­nom­ic fo­cus from lo­cal busi­ness lead­ers and econ­o­mists.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro an­nounced the de­ci­sion last evening, af­ter his Vice Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­dríguez, rec­om­mend­ed the move af­ter ac­cus­ing T&T of try­ing to pro­voke a war with the ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly war­ship in Port-of-Spain and of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the CIA. She rec­om­mend­ed that Cara­cas end the 2015 En­er­gy Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment, which al­lows for joint gas de­vel­op­ment across both na­tions’ mar­itime bor­ders.