The selfie test

Mick­ela Pan­day Diplo­ma­cy with Venezuela is back on the ta­ble, and that is nei­ther sur­pris­ing nor in­her­ent­ly trou­bling. Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not change its ge­og­ra­phy. Venezuela is our clos­est ma­jor neigh­bour and there are in­ter­ests we can­not sim­ply wish away. En­er­gy, trade, se­cu­ri­ty, the en­vi­ron­ment and the man­age­ment of our shared mar­itime space. So I wel­come en­gage­ment. What I find more dif­fi­cult is the way this en­gage­ment is be­ing pre­sent­ed. Fol­low­ing For­eign Min­is­ter Sean Sobers' vis­it to Cara­cas, the two gov­ern­ments an­nounced a 'work agen­da' in­tend­ed to ush­er in what they called a 'new era' in bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions. The agen­da cov­ers en­er­gy, trade, agri­cul­ture, the en­vi­ron­ment, cul­ture and se­cu­ri­ty, with a per­ma­nent chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the two coun­tries. That is en­cour­ag­ing. But it al­so rais­es a more fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: what, pre­cise­ly, is T&T seek­ing from this new re­la­tion­ship? That is not the same as de­mand­ing that a for­eign min­is­ter re­turn from one meet­ing with a signed agree­ment. Diplo­ma­cy does not work that way. Ne­go­ti­a­tions take time, and some mat­ters nec­es­sar­i­ly re­main con­fi­den­tial. But a gov­ern­ment should know what it wants be­fore it be­gins ne­go­ti­at­ing. And the pub­lic should be able to un­der­stand, at least in broad terms, what na­tion­al in­ter­ests are be­ing pur­sued. This mat­ters par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of what was hap­pen­ing in Cara­cas at al­most ex­act­ly the same time. On Sep­tem­ber 2, just a day be­fore Sobers' meet­ing, Venezuela an­nounced sig­nif­i­cant new en­er­gy agree­ments with in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. Chevron an­nounced agree­ments un­der­pin­ning more than US$7 bil­lion of planned in­vest­ment over five years, with pro­duc­tion ex­pect­ed to more than dou­ble to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 600,000 bar­rels a day. Eni signed a pro­duc­tion-shar­ing agree­ment for the Junín 5 field. Oth­er en­er­gy arrange­ments were al­so an­nounced. Trinidad and To­ba­go's cir­cum­stances are ob­vi­ous­ly dif­fer­ent. We are not Chevron or Eni, and it would be ab­surd to sug­gest that a diplo­mat­ic meet­ing be­tween two neigh­bour­ing states should pro­duce an iden­ti­cal com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion. But the con­trast is nev­er­the­less dif­fi­cult to ig­nore. While ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies were an­nounc­ing named projects, in­vest­ment com­mit­ments and de­fined com­mer­cial arrange­ments, T&T emerged with a broad work agen­da. So what tan­gi­ble ad­vance­ment did we ob­tain? That ques­tion be­comes even more im­por­tant when we con­sid­er the en­er­gy op­por­tu­ni­ties that lie di­rect­ly with­in our sphere of in­ter­est. The Gov­ern­ment has spo­ken re­peat­ed­ly about Venezue­lan gas and the op­por­tu­ni­ties it could cre­ate for T&T. The Lo­ran-Man­a­tee field strad­dles the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween our two coun­tries. Yet the En­er­gy Min­istry cur­rent­ly says that the re­sources in place and the pro­por­tion al­lo­cat­ed to each coun­try have been agreed, while the Lo­ran-Man­a­tee Uni­ti­sa­tion Treaty has been draft­ed and the coun­tries are still await­ing agree­ment be­fore de­vel­op­ment can pro­ceed. If the al­lo­ca­tion has been agreed and the treaty has been draft­ed, what re­mains un­re­solved? Per­haps there are le­git­i­mate tech­ni­cal, com­mer­cial or diplo­mat­ic is­sues still be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed. If so, the coun­try should be told that much. Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty has its place in in­ter­na­tion­al ne­go­ti­a­tions; it can­not be­come the de­fault ex­pla­na­tion for every­thing. This is where I be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment owes the pub­lic greater clar­i­ty. We have heard much about op­por­tu­ni­ty. We have heard about a new era. We have heard about the enor­mous po­ten­tial of Venezuela's en­er­gy re­sources and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for Trinidad and To­ba­go. But what ex­act­ly are we ne­go­ti­at­ing for? Are we seek­ing ac­cess to gas for our own en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty? Are we seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to max­imise the use of our ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture? Are we seek­ing greater in­vest­ment, stronger com­mer­cial arrange­ments or a more se­cure fu­ture for our en­er­gy-based in­dus­tries? These are not un­rea­son­able ques­tions. They are the ba­sic ques­tions that should un­der­pin any na­tion­al strat­e­gy. If there is one. And there is an im­por­tant dis­tinc­tion here. Venezue­lan gas be­ing processed in Trinidad may cre­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and gen­er­ate val­ue from in­fra­struc­ture we al­ready have. But that is not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly the same thing as strength­en­ing the do­mes­tic gas sup­ply on which our own in­dus­tries de­pend. The ques­tion, there­fore, is not whether T&T should en­gage Venezuela. We should. Nor is the ques­tion whether we should al­low ne­go­ti­a­tions the time they re­quire. Of course we should. The ques­tion is whether we are en­ter­ing this new era with a clear un­der­stand­ing of what we want to achieve and whether the Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to ac­count for the na­tion­al in­ter­est it is pur­su­ing. A re­set in re­la­tions may in­deed be­come an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T. But op­por­tu­ni­ty is not achieve­ment and diplo­mat­ic lan­guage is not a sub­sti­tute for strat­e­gy. The Gov­ern­ment has de­scribed this as a new era. I hope it is. But a new era in for­eign re­la­tions should ul­ti­mate­ly be judged by more than the restora­tion of cor­dial­i­ty. It should be judged by whether Trinidad and To­ba­go has ad­vanced its in­ter­ests and se­cured mean­ing­ful val­ue for its peo­ple. And per­haps the For­eign Min­is­ter him­self gave us the ap­pro­pri­ate stan­dard when he said that this was not about 'jump­ing on a plane to take a self­ie' and claim­ing an achieve­ment. Quite so, Min­is­ter. So let us hope the Cara­cas pho­to­graph is not the most tan­gi­ble thing you brought home. Mick­ela Pan­day is the Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and At­tor­ney at Law