THE FLIP SIDE OF PETROCARIBE

• November 25 2018
• http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sunday-finance/caribbean-academic-says-petrocaribe_150508

PLACENCIA, Belize (CMC) — A leading Caribbean academic says that while Venezuela's PetroCaribe initiative helped participating Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries get through a difficult patch, it also deterred investments in renewable energy.

In 2005, Caracas developed an oil alliance with many Caribbean states to purchase oil on conditions of preferential payment. Eight years later, PetroCaribe agreed links with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), to go beyond oil and promote economic cooperation.

“I think the record is clear: PetroCaribe reduced a lot of its members to debt-laden countries,” Professor Emeritus Anthony Bryan said, adding that by 2015, more than one-third of the external debt of Caricom members of PetroCaribe was owed to Venezuela.

Bryan told delegates attending the Sixth Caribbean Sustainable Energy Forum (CSEF VI) that in addition, Venezuela's resource diplomacy had a telling impact on Caricom regional negotiation and regional cooperation.

“Some got deals, signed agreements which were better than others,” he said as he spoke on the topic “Geopolitics, Climate Change and Energy Governance within the Caribbean”.

The University of the West Indies (UWI) scholar, who is also an independent consultant on energy development, said that then Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, under whose leadership Caracas launched PetroCaribe, had noted afterwards that “oil is a geopolitical weapon”.

“… at that time, the Venezuelan largesse was being distributed throughout the Caribbean and the hemisphere in the name of 21st century socialism,” Bryan said.