PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — The Trinidad and Tobago government has brushed aside criticisms relating to the new gas agreement it signed with Venezuela over the weekend, even as the main opposition United National Congress (UNC) called for the terms regarding the price of gas under the accord to be made public.

“We in the Opposition were always concerned with this agreement given the economic hardship being experienced by the Venezuelan government as well as this government’s track-record of incompetence,” said UNC chairman, David Lee.

Lee said the party’s concerns have been raised due to the failure by Caracas to meet the payments for goods sent to the South American country in recent months.

“It is therefore unacceptable and irresponsible that over one year since these questions were first posed and over two years since goods were first shipped to Venezuela manufacturers have not been adequately compensated,” he said.

But Energy Minister, Franklin Khan, told reporters that the gas agreement was reached after “months of negotiation, serious intervention, serious sharing of information and serious sharing of economic models, to come up with an appropriate gas price.

“It is no cheap gas. It is competitively priced gas and is obviously no secret Dragon deal,” Khan said, adding that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, larger than Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States and has the fifth largest gas reserves in the world that Trinidad can benefit from.

“It’s a win-win situation, especially since we in Trinidad face challenges on the supply side,” he said, noting that Trinidad and Tobago has world-class gas infrastructure through which Venezuela can monetise its gas.

“This provides an ideal opportunity for Trinidad and Venezuela. If I can say so, I think it is a marriage made in heaven,” Khan said.

The energy minister told reporters that it is widely accepted within the energy sector that “the commercial terms of gas sales agreement are subject to the strictest confidentiality clauses. “No government past or present, UNC or PNM (People’s National Movement), has ever made known to the public any negotiated price of gas,” Khan said.

Last Saturday, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro signed the agreement allowing for the importation of natural gas from Caracas.

The terms of the agreement was between the National Gas Company (NGC), the Venezuelan NGC, Shell and the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (Petroleum of Venezuela).

“We may have been able to save our industry by getting a secure source of gas for the downstream sector. It may over time also allow us to look at the expansion of the downstream sector and investments there, as long as we can show investors we have a secured stream of gas,” Rowley told journalists.

He also revealed that the NGC has been able to negotiate a tranche of gas for power generation at an even lower price than the rest of the gas to be used by the petrochemical sector.

Rowley said the pipeline carrying the gas from Venezuela’s Dragon Gas field in Eastern Venezuela to Shell’s Hibiscus platform off the North Coast will be built and owned in a joint venture between the NGC and Shell Trinidad. The estimated cost of the construction of the pipeline is over TT$1 billion (One TT dollar =US$0.16 cents).

The Dragon field is located within Venezuela’s maritime territory, just off the north-west coast of Trinidad. It is close to the Hibiscus platform, jointly owned by the Trinidad and Tobago government and Shell.

Shell is also the operator of Dragon and is helping the Trinidad and Tobago government develop and process gas from Loran-Manatee, which is off the south-east coast of Trinidad, and spans the maritime borders of Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Loran-Manatee field has an estimated 10.25 trillion cubic feet of gas of which roughly 74 per cent belongs to Venezuela with 26 per cent belonging to Trinidad and Tobago.