Venezuela Suspends Gas Deal With Trinidad and Tobago Over US Warship Visit

Venezuela has abruptly suspended a major natural gas deal with its Caribbean neighbour Trinidad and Tobago, after accusing the island nation of aiding United States military operations near its waters.

President Nicolas Maduro on Monday ordered the “immediate suspension” of the long-delayed Dragon gasfield project, citing Trinidad and Tobago’s decision to host a US warship. State broadcaster TeleSUR reported that the Venezuelan leader denounced Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar for turning her country “into an aircraft carrier of the American empire against Venezuela.”

The USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer carrying US Marines, docked in Trinidad’s capital Port of Spain on Sunday for joint exercises, part of a larger deployment ordered by US President Donald Trump’s administration. Washington has described the deployment as part of an anti-narcotics operation, but Caracas sees it as a pretext for regime change.

“Trinidad and Tobago ran out of gas before Venezuela agreed to help,” Maduro said, implying that Caracas had acted in good faith before being “betrayed.”

Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar quickly dismissed the accusations, telling Newsday that her government “is not susceptible to any blackmail from the Venezuelans for political support.”

“Our future does not depend on Venezuela and never has,” she said. “The last government mistakenly placed all their hopes in the Dragon project. We have not done so.”

Despite the fiery rhetoric, Persad-Bissessar denied that relations between the two countries had fundamentally broken down.

“We are neighbours separated by only 11 kilometres. We have always had differences, but we remain diplomatic,” she said.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto condemned the US presence in the Caribbean, calling it an “illegal and completely immoral military threat hanging over our heads.”

The Pentagon has so far deployed seven warships, drones, and fighter jets in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Since September, the Trump administration has launched 10 strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats, killing at least 43 people. Critics, including several Latin American governments, have compared the operations to extrajudicial killings.

Trinidad’s prime minister, however, has openly supported the US campaign.

“I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all, violently,” Persad-Bissessar said earlier this month.

The Dragon gasfield, discovered in Venezuelan waters near Trinidad, has been a potential lifeline for both nations’ energy sectors since the two countries signed a joint development deal in 2018. But progress has been slow, largely due to US sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

The field, estimated to hold 119 billion cubic metres (4.2 trillion cubic feet) of gas, was meant to supply Trinidad’s energy-hungry industry through a consortium involving Shell and Trinidad’s National Gas Company.

While the US has allowed limited exceptions to its sanctions to enable development of the project, Washington has warned that it would not permit any deal that significantly benefits Maduro’s government.

The fate of a related venture, the Manatee gasfield, which straddles the maritime border but is being developed on Trinidad’s side, remains uncertain.