The En­er­gy Cham­ber is call­ing for a re­newed na­tion­al fo­cus on se­cur­ing and ex­pand­ing do­mes­tic nat­ur­al gas sup­plies, fol­low­ing Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend en­er­gy sec­tor agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The move by Cara­cas comes af­ter Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro sus­pend­ed the 2015 En­er­gy Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment, which al­lowed for joint gas de­vel­op­ment across the two coun­tries’ shared mar­itime bor­ders.

Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez made the rec­om­men­da­tion to Maduro af­ter ac­cus­ing T&T of at­tempt­ing to pro­voke con­flict with the ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly war­ship in Port-of-Spain and al­leged col­lab­o­ra­tion with the CIA.