Raphael John-Lall

Ex­hibitors at the 2012 So­ci­ety of Pe­tro­le­um En­gi­neers En­er­gy Con­fer­ence ex­pect to make new con­tacts and gen­er­ate busi­ness at the three-day con­fer­ence that start­ed on Mon­day, at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, Port-of-Spain. Some were lo­cal com­pa­nies and at least one com­pa­ny is a new en­trant to the T&T mar­ket. Patrick Yee, se­nior su­per­vi­sor, pro­cure­ment, ANSA Tech­nolo­gies Ltd, a sub­sidiary of the ANSA McAL Group, was con­fi­dent busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor will im­prove. "We hope to get quite a lot of busi­ness. The in­dus­try was a bit stag­nant over the past two-and-a-half years, but we have seen some re­cent move­ment over the last quar­ter of last year in­to the first quar­ter of 2012. The ex­pec­ta­tion is that busi­ness will be pick­ing up. We have seen that state-owned Petrotrin has start­ed boost­ing op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of drilling and op­er­a­tions.

"We see the fu­ture be­ing bright. The gov­ern­ment is look­ing at the deep­wa­ter blocks off the east coast of Trinidad, where ex­plo­ration wil be tak­ing place. We see de­vel­op­ment over the next five years or so," Yee said. He spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian at Mon­day's open­ing of the en­er­gy con­fer­ence ti­tled De­vel­op­ing Re­sources for Sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Yee said ANSA Tech­nolo­gies has a wide range of ser­vices to of­fer for­eign com­pa­nies. "We ser­vice the oil and gas in­dus­try here in T&T. We recog­nise that most of the ma­jor oil play­ers are here and we have a wide range of goods and ser­vices that we can of­fer to them with re­gard to pipes, valves and fit­tings, oil­field equip­ment, in­stru­men­ta­tion au­toma­tion. one word or miss­ing a com­ma be­tween them? "We are look­ing to of­fer a full range of ser­vice to the ma­jor oil play­ers. We sup­ply every­thing in terms of goods and ser­vices the clients would re­quire."

Lan­dO­cean En­er­gy Ser­vices

The Chi­nese com­pa­ny, Lan­dO­cean En­er­gy Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Ltd, was al­so an ex­hibitor. Lan­dO­cean En­er­gy Ser­vices, lo­cat­ed in the Sil­i­con Val­ley of Chi­na, is one of Chi­na's largest list­ed joint-stock oil ser­vice com­pa­nies spe­cial­is­ing in oil ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment and rel­e­vant soft­ware. The com­pa­ny serves the oil and gas in­dus­try in a wide scope, from tech­nol­o­gy re­search on oil and gas ex­plo­ration, de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion, to re­search and de­vel­op­ment, prod­uct sales, tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices, train­ing and im­port and ex­port of tech­nol­o­gy. Juan Zhang, sales man­ag­er for the South Amer­i­can area, said the com­pa­ny's en­try in the T&T mar­ket is new. "We plan to es­tab­lish an of­fice in T&T soon. Our com­pa­ny does ge­o­log­i­cal ser­vices like seis­mic da­ta pro­cess­ing. Next month we will sign a con­tract with Petrotrin to do pro­cess­ing of seis­mic da­ta. We are al­so look­ing at do­ing work with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny. It is pos­si­ble we will al­so do work with Cen­tri­ca (En­er­gy) and bpTT," Zhang said. "I think two or three peo­ple will be com­ing from our of­fice in the Unit­ed States to set up the of­fice here and we will hire about five or six peo­ple here. Ac­tu­al­ly, we have of­fices in Latin Amer­i­ca in Ecuador, Colom­bia, Ar­genti­na. We al­so have an­oth­er one in Cana­da." Lan­dO­cean En­er­gy Ser­vices is a glob­al op­er­a­tion. "We have 1,000 peo­ple em­ployed glob­al­ly. In Chi­na we have over 500 em­ploy­ees. We are the biggest en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­ny in Chi­na and we are al­so list­ed on the Chi­nese stock mar­ket."

Laing Sand­blast­ing and Paint­ing

Mar­sha Williams, mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Laing Sand­blast­ing and Paint­ing, want­ed to use the con­fer­ence to show­case the com­pa­ny's ser­vices to lo­cal and for­eign en­er­gy com­pa­nies. "We want to get an in­flux of busi­ness not on­ly from T&T, but from for­eign com­pa­nies from North Amer­i­ca and al­so from Latin Amer­i­ca. We have done work with the Neal and Massy Wood Group, and we have done sev­er­al projects with them in the ar­eas of trans­port and blast­ing and paint­ing on their Ma­hogany plat­form. We have al­so done work on BHP's plat­form as well, Tuck­er En­er­gy Ser­vices and bpTT," Williams said. She said the com­pa­ny, which em­ploys about 350, pro­vides a wide range of ser­vices, both in and out of the en­er­gy in­dus­try. "We are a com­plete­ly lo­cal com­pa­ny, 100 per cent lo­cal­ly owned and op­er­at­ed. We are the providers of the truck­ing ser­vices that are need­ed. We pro­vide equip­ment rental for all types of equip­ment. We do black­wa­ter line clean­ing on plat­forms and sand­blast­ing and paint­ing, both on- and off­shore." Williams said Laing Sand­blast­ing and Paint­ing is po­si­tion­ing it­self as a com­pa­ny that is di­ver­si­fied in its range of ser­vices. "We want to tell the world we are more than trans­port and we are mul­ti­task­ing. There are oth­er as­pects of the com­pa­ny we want them to ex­plore, like our pump­ing ser­vices, our wa­ter blast­ing and clean­ing and oth­er ar­eas."

L&S Sur­vey­ing Ser­vices

Michael Mo­hammed, sales man­ag­er, L&S Sur­vey­ing Ltd, high­light­ed the work of its un­der­ground util­i­ty di­vi­sion, which, he said, is its newest ser­vice. "This is for the pro­tec­tion of un­der­ground util­i­ties where we can lo­cate buried util­i­ties. Es­pe­cial­ly in Port-of-Spain, there are many buried util­i­ties, like wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, phone and even the providers are un­sure of where they are. "Re­cent­ly in Diego Mar­tin, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny ran a line and rup­tured a Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) main be­cause they were not sure where it was," Mo­hammed said. "What we try to do is pro­tect your un­der­ground as­sets be­cause util­i­ties are cost­ly." Mo­hammed wants to sen­si­tise util­i­ty providers Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and WASA on the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing their as­sets. "We have done some work with Pow­er­gen and with TSTT. In case of TSTT, we did some work with their fi­bre op­tic ca­bles." "A far as we know, we are the on­ly ones who are do­ing this. The pe­tro­le­um sec­tor has a num­ber of un­der­ground util­i­ties, both gas and oil. We want the play­ers in the en­er­gy sec­tor to know what we are do­ing."