Trinindad and Barbados are the true lapdogs of Blair and the neocons............



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WE WILL NOT SIGN OIL DEAL’[/align]





Deal maker: Chavez
Barbados and T&T say no to cheap Venezuelan oil
Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago last week refused to sign an oil deal with Venezuela that would see oil produced in the Caribbean sold cheaply to other islands.
Oil prices reached a record high of US$61 (£34) a barrel last week.
Officials from 12 other Caribbean islands signed up to the Petro Caribe deal at a meeting with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
FAILURE
Venezuelan opposition parties described the move as a ‘colossal failure’.
T&T’s prime minister Patrick Manning said that he did not sign as he thought the deal could put his country at a disadvantage.
Manning said T&T was an exporter of petroleum products and would naturally have a different perspective and the prime minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, said his government did not sign the deal because his cabinet had not yet seen the agreement.
However he hinted that he would be unlikely to accept the deal without the blessing of Trinidad and Tobago which refines crude oil from Barbados.
“Nobody else has been prepared to put in place a processing relationship for us,� said Arthur at a meeting of the CARICOM (Caribbean Community)?heads of government conference in St Lucia.
Arthur explained: “Our constitution in Barbados requires the practice of collective responsibility. Our collective responsibility is that... the whole cabinet has to be party to any decision binding upon the government.�
“In this particular matter, my cabinet did not see this agreement in advance.�
He explained that Barbados was unwilling to “have a relationship with just any and everybody unless they are prepared� to process that country’s crude oil.
“We have an arrangement whereby Trinidad processes our crude oil and gives us back the equivalent in product,� he said.
“So some of the energy products we take in from Trinidad is in fact Barbados crude transformed into equivalent product.
“In any energy relationship we have to take into account, not just how attractive are the financial terms, but the ability to have Barbados crude oil processed.�
The Petro Caribe deal is to be part of the Bolivarian Alternative trade pact, the brainchild of Chavez.
BRAINCHILD
The trade pact would be a direct competitor with the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is supported by the US.
Trinidad and Tobago has been competing to host the headquarters of the FTAA.
The US government has been having a war of words with Chavez government of Venezuela since the US endorsed the 2002 coup that briefly unseated the president.
Under the Petro Caribe initiative, an expanded fleet of Venezuelan oil tankers would deliver fuel directly to the Caribbean islands bypassing costly intermediaries.
Chavez explained that Venezuela would be willing to accept goods such as bananas or sugar for a portion of payments as well as build new oil depots in the islands.

Fancy yourself a sub-editor, do you coltrane?

@jazz

I am sorry no offence intended but I had to do that so it could be readable clearly..infact I reposted it again under different heading ..thought maybe be carribeans in the room might contribute to the issue



no offence intended and I apologise for that