Amer­i­can en­er­gy econ­o­mist Fran­cis­co Monal­di be­lieves that the US Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est moves which re­voked the li­cences to ex­plore and de­vel­op the gas fields with­in Venezue­lan bor­ders is a “ma­jor blow” for T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

Monal­di lec­tures in en­er­gy eco­nom­ics at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States and is of­ten quot­ed in the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia and oil and gas jour­nals where he shares his views on the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy in­dus­try.

“It is a bad day and bad news for the T&T’s gas in­dus­try. I was sur­prised by the re­vo­ca­tion of the li­cences be­cause I as­sume that in the short term, it did not pro­vide any rev­enue to the Venezue­lan regime and e fact that it was a very im­por­tant agree­ment for T&T. Al­so, I as­sumed they would not re­voke the li­cences right now and wait un­til they ex­pired and would al­so wait with­in the next year to de­cide. This shows that the US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s dri­ve to­wards max­i­mum pres­sure left noth­ing stand­ing,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian.