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In text messages to The Associated Press, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she was not concerned over the potential cancellation of the energy agreement, adding that the military training exercises were exclusively for “internal security” purposes. “Our future does not depend on Venezuela and never has," Persad-Bissessar wrote. “We have our plans and projects to grow our economy both within the energy and non-energy sectors.” Rodríguez, who is also Venezuela’s minister of hydrocarbons, said she would ask President Nicolás Maduro to withdraw from a 2015 agreement that enables neighboring countries to carry out joint natural gas exploration projects in the waters between both nations. Trinidad and Venezuela are separated by a small bay that is just 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide at its narrowest point. Unlike other leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean who have compared strikes on alleged drug vessels to extrajudicial killings, Persad-Bissessar has supported the campaign. She has said that she’d rather see drug traffickers “blown to pieces” than have them kill the citizens of her nation.
