Editorial | The Kamla-Delcy rapprochement

The recent meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly between Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez and Trinidad and Tobago’s Kamla Persad-Bissessar is good for their countries.

It is also positive for the rest of the Caribbean, especially if it helps to reduce tension in the region and reinforces CARICOM’s promotion of the Caribbean as a zone of peace.

Relations between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago became deeply strained, close to the point of rupture, after Ms Persad-Bissessar became prime minister in May 2025, following her United National Congress victory in general elections. She quickly sought to burnish a reputation as the hard woman of the Caribbean, standing firmly on the ideological right.

The new prime minister questioned proposed joint natural gas production agreements between the countries, which had been spearheaded by her predecessor’s administration, and trolled Venezuela’s then leader, Nicolás Maduro, whose democratic legitimacy had long been contested by the United States over disputed elections.

The spat became so deep and personal that Venezuela’s National Assembly declared Ms Persad-Bissessar persona non grata. Ms Rodriguez became the primary face of Caracas’ public messaging against the Trinidadian leader. She once described Ms Persad-Bissessar as a woman who crawled “like a worm”.

In turn, Ms Persad-Bissessar backed Donald Trump’s escalating pressure on Mr Maduro’s government. She also allowed the Americans to use her country as a listening post for their military operations in the southern Caribbean to blow up alleged drug-smuggling vessels off the Venezuelan coast and, ultimately, it is believed, for Mr Maduro’s special-forces capture and removal.

Additionally, when her Caribbean Community colleagues reiterated the region’s declaration as a zone of peace, Ms Persad-Bissessar vigorously demurred, doubling down on her support for the American military’s deadly destruction of purported drug vessels, rather than arresting and trying the alleged smugglers in civil courts.

However, the dynamics in Venezuela changed significantly with Mr Maduro’s removal. Ms Rodriguez assumed the position of acting president. With the threat of further military action hanging over her government, she sidelined several former Maduro ministers and aligned Venezuela’s economic policies more closely with the interests of the United States.

SIGNIFICANT OF DEVELOPMENTS

Perhaps the most significant of these developments has occurred in the oil sector, which had previously been under punishing American sanctions. Vast tracts of oilfields, estimated to contain over 60 billion barrels of crude, around 20 per cent of the country’s proven reserves, have been handed over to US oil companies for development and exploitation. The Americans will have significant control over how royalties and profits from these ventures flow to Caracas.

Stripped to its core, aspects of Venezuela’s relationship with the United States lie somewhere between suzerainty and hegemonic trusteeship. Which, in part, informs the September 27 meeting in New York between Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar and President Rodriguez. Caracas has had cause to tone down its aggressive posture against Trinidad and Tobago, which, at their closest point, are separated by only seven miles of sea. It has also cooled its rhetoric against Guyana, a CARICOM member, two-thirds of whose territory it claims.

There are potentially significant benefits in the new alignment for Trinidad and Tobago, whose economy has been stressed over the past decade as the petroleum sector has stagnated or declined. GDP expanded by less than one per cent in 2025 and will grow this year, according to IMF estimates, by 0.8 per cent.

DRAGON GAS FIELD PROJECT

However, the rapprochement with Venezuela, evidenced by the Persad-Bissessar/Rodriguez meeting, will allow the countries, with the imprimatur of the United States, to proceed with the long-stalled Dragon gas field project.

The Dragon field, which sits in Venezuelan waters, contains 3.5 to 4.2 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of proven natural gas reserves. The joint venture would allow the capture of that gas for processing and exporting from Trinidad and Tobago’s underutilised natural gas facilities.

Additionally, the new atmosphere is paving the way for the countries to proceed with the development and exploitation of the Loran-Manatee gas field, which straddles their territorial sea boundaries and contains an estimated 7.3 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of reserves.

The communiqué after the Persad-Bissessar/Rodriguez summit “reaffirmed the historical bonds of friendship and cooperation that unite Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago” and announced plans by the leaders to visit each other’s country. Ms Rodriguez had previously visited Grenada and Barbados, and the Barbadian prime minister, Mia Mottley, reciprocated with a visit to Caracas.

Caribbean countries will not agree on everything. Points of difference are obvious. But most of the challenges faced by regional countries are the same or similar, as are their solutions. Finding as much common ground as possible from which to address these issues is sensible. That is unlikely to be done by leaders trolling each other and growling back and forth from the edge of their borders.