Cur­tis Williams

On Tues­day the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) will have a new leader with In­dar Ma­haraj as­sum­ing lead­er­ship of the State-owned com­pa­ny. As re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly in last week's Busi­ness Guardian, Ma­haraj's as­cen­sion to the post of NGC pres­i­dent has not been with­out its de­trac­tors with ques­tions raised about whether he was the best per­son for the job and de­nials that it was due to po­lit­i­cal favouritism. What is clear is that Ma­haraj is tak­ing over the role of pres­i­dent at one of the most chal­leng­ing phase of the NGC de­vel­op­ment and will have to bring sig­nif­i­cant ca­pa­bil­i­ties to the job if he is to steer the com­pa­ny away from the dan­gers that it faces. Sev­er­al peo­ple in the en­er­gy sec­tor who the Busi­ness Guardian spoke to told of the enor­mi­ty of the task fac­ing Ma­haraj and in­sist­ed NGC needs vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship at this time. Rod­ney Ja­gai, pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T and the for­mer pres­i­dent of Petrotrin, told the Busi­ness Guardian that Ma­haraj will have to show "strong and vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship.

Said Ja­gai: "We can have ad­min­is­tra­tive lead­er­ship that just meets the ex­ist­ing con­tracts with the cur­rent gas re­serves, or we can have strong vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship that re­shapes the gas in­dus­try and en­sures longevi­ty." Ian Welch, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of PCS Ni­tro­gen, agreed with Ja­gai on NGC need­ing strong, re­silient lead­er­ship. He said the new pres­i­dent will have to ad­dress the is­sue of the com­pet­i­tive­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the lo­cal nat­ur­al gas sec­tor. Welch ar­gued that a cen­tral is­sue fac­ing the NGC would be its abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate a path that would al­low up­stream pro­duc­ers to get a fair price for their nat­ur­al gas while al­so en­sur­ing the gas price paid by the down­stream com­pa­nies is one that al­lows them to suc­cess­ful­ly com­pete against the low price of shale gas in the Unit­ed States. He said: "The is­sue is how do we en­sure that the up­stream pro­duc­ers are mak­ing enough mon­ey for their gas to en­sure they can val­i­date their ex­is­tence while, at the same time, en­sure that the price of gas to the down­stream com­pa­nies are low enough to en­sure that their busi­ness is vi­able and mak­ing sure that the NGC could make mon­ey from its busi­ness." Welch ar­gued for a need to sit down in a tri­par­tite dis­cus­sion in­volv­ing pro­duc­ers, down­stream com­pa­nies, and the NGC to work out an ac­cept­able for­mu­la and pric­ing sys­tem.

bpTT has al­ready sig­nalled to the mar­ket­place if it is go­ing to pro­duce gas in ex­cess of its con­tract­ed amounts in an ef­fort to sat­is­fy the de­mand of the mar­ket, that a por­tion of the gas should en­joy pre­mi­um be­cause of the ad­di­tion­al cost the com­pa­ny in­curs by ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion. "There needs to be a win-win sit­u­a­tion for all the play­ers be­cause every­body is try­ing to make mon­ey and no­body is in busi­ness to lose mon­ey," Welch told BG. The Busi­ness Guardian al­so spoke to a chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of a ma­jor en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­ny who said if the up­stream pro­duc­ers do not get fair re­turn for bring­ing gas to mar­ket, they will not de­vel­op the fields. He said if a mech­a­nism that al­lowed the up­stream pro­duc­ers to sell di­rect­ly to some users was avail­able, the present short­age may not have hap­pened and the up­stream com­pa­nies would get a bet­ter price for their gas. The en­er­gy ex­ec­u­tive NGC is a mo­nop­oly and has not so far been will­ing to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­duc­ing its con­trol of the mar­ket. To Welsh, the new NGC pres­i­dent will have to en­sure he un­der­stands and main­tains the sanc­ti­ty of con­tracts. He said T&T has a his­to­ry of en­sur­ing that con­tracts are main­tained and he ex­pects the NGC boss to main­tain this sit­u­a­tion.

The CEO raised con­cerns about Ma­haraj get­ting the job over an­oth­er can­di­date that on pa­per ap­peared more qual­i­fied than him. "I know Ma­haraj and I know the oth­er can­di­date. I know both of them well be­cause they are my con­tem­po­raries and, to be hon­est, it's chalk and cheese, so I was shocked by the NGC's choice but, be that as it may, the new pres­i­dent will have to deal with many is­sues and I agree that the sanc­ti­ty of con­tracts is cru­cial." The CEO said he did not want to speak on the record be­cause his com­pa­ny had bil­lions of dol­lars in­vest­ed in T&T and did not want to say any­thing that would neg­a­tive­ly im­pact that in­vest­ment. He said the NGC was at one of its most dy­nam­ic pe­ri­ods in its his­to­ry with chal­lenges from the up­stream sec­tor right through to the down­stream, un­der­lin­ing the need for a leader of stature who un­der­stands the dy­nam­ics at play in a de­mand­ing pe­ri­od with a need to change the sta­tus quo. The CEO said: "T&T has es­tab­lished it­self as a venue for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment based on the sanc­ti­ty of con­tracts and sta­ble gov­ern­ment and if the sanc­ti­ty of con­tracts is not ad­hered to, we will be step­ping on very dan­ger­ous ground."