Click to view full size

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has re­fused to say who will lead ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela over the stalled Drag­on gas project, in­sist­ing on­ly that “the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is one Gov­ern­ment.”

Pressed on whether he per­son­al­ly would meet with Venezue­lan of­fi­cials yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal de­flect­ed: “All I can tell you is that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will have dis­cus­sions with all stake­hold­ers in­volved, whether it’s the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, the multi­na­tion­als in­volved, the Unit­ed States ad­min­is­tra­tion … We are very con­fi­dent that the Drag­on has been res­ur­rect­ed.”

His re­marks came just a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Wash­ing­ton on Mon­day, where the US sig­nalled sup­port for restart­ing the cross-bor­der ven­ture. The de­vel­op­ment is wide­ly viewed as a break­through, fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton’s de­ci­sion in April to re­voke a key OFAC li­cence—a move that stalled the project weeks be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.