To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the col­lapse of the Drag­on gas deal is the re­sult of years of “mis­man­age­ment and poor plan­ning” by the PNM Gov­ern­ment, and a warn­ing sign that Trinidad and To­ba­go ur­gent­ly needs to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my.

“I heard the un­for­tu­nate news. And this is ab­solute­ly not news that we are go­ing to cel­e­brate,” Au­gus­tine said at a To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) meet­ing in Ply­mouth on Tues­day night.

The US gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly re­voked the li­cence that once al­lowed Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­vel­op the long-stalled nat­ur­al gas project with Venezuela. The deal was wide­ly seen as a way to ease the coun­try’s gas short­fall and boost its en­er­gy sec­tor.