BROWNE AND DRAGON DEAL

CCNTV6

Economist and Former  Government Minister Mariano Browne weighs in on the Dragon gas deal with Venezuela, the US sanctions on Venezuela and the energy outlook, post 2025.  He says a lot depends on the position taken by the Shell Oil company.  More from Nicole M Romany.

Transcript

00:00 Concerns have been raised in the public domain over the expiration of Venezuela's temporary

00:06 license in April of this year, allowing Venezuela to conduct oil sector transactions with other

00:13 countries.

00:14 However, the government has made it clear that this country has nothing to fear, as

00:19 the OFAC license granted to us is valid until October 2025.

00:25 Still, economist Mariano Brown says we are not out of the woods yet.

00:30 It means more gas.

00:31 That's the reality.

00:32 Now, whether Dragon comes to market or not, in large measures, it's dependent upon two

00:39 or three things.

00:41 One, Trinidad is not spending, is not the major investor here, Shell is.

00:48 And that's what the Prime Minister said.

00:50 The reality about that is, again, that we have depended upon a license.

00:55 If that license ends, then by definition, so does Dragon for the foreseeable future.

01:01 Brown also responds to claims by the opposition that government formed a secret company for

01:07 the Dragon gas deal.

01:09 Some of the people have been making comments within recent times, the opposition in particular,

01:13 I think Mr. Muli-Lan yesterday.

01:17 Some of those comments are silly.

01:20 For example, it is normal for when an organization is getting involved, it creates some sort

01:25 of special purpose entity to be able to do that.

01:28 NGC has already done that.

01:29 And I think they've created a company and the license has been issued in the name of

01:33 that special purposes company.

01:34 That's normal.

01:35 Those are things that are normal.

01:37 That's nothing that the government should have any difficulty in disclosing.

01:41 Brown notes that even if the Dragon deal works out, Trinidad and Tobago will not benefit

01:47 for the next few years.

01:49 However, he says, there are gas supplies, but it's more complicated than just that.

01:56 We will need to do more work in terms of finding additional gas supplies.

02:04 Now, the reality is that Trinidad and Tobago probably does have more gas, but it's in deeper

02:10 fields which are expensive to develop.

02:15 And that is a problem.

02:17 The development of those fields, whether they will go ahead or not, and quite frankly, I'm

02:23 pretty certain that the international companies know, gas companies, Shell, BP, I think they

02:28 know where the resources are.

02:30 The issue has always been how to access them.

02:34 He says there have been some limitations in terms of what size of field the companies

02:40 are willing to access.

02:42 Nicole M. Romany, TV6 News.

02:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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