Aleem Khan

Out­side of its Ab­erdeen, Scot­land head­quar­ters, T&T is Fearn­ley Proc­ter's flag­ship op­er­a­tion, co-founder Kevin Fearn­ley said dur­ing a Ju­ly 21 in­ter­view at the Hy­att in Port of Spain. The "so­lu­tion-based com­pa­ny fo­cused on re­duc­ing non-pro­duc­tive time" in the oil and gas sec­tor has 14 of­fices in 12 coun­tries on five con­ti­nents.

"Trinidad is our flag­ship," he said, adding that this is not on­ly be­cause it was the first out­side of the North Sea (UK) but al­so be­cause of the way the com­pa­ny has been em­braced here. "As a com­pa­ny own­er you want to know that you're wel­come be­cause you're go­ing to in­vest your mon­ey, and we've in­vest­ed a lot of mon­ey here over the years. It is a prof­itable op­er­a­tion, ob­vi­ous­ly, be­cause we're still here. We've had a cou­ple of bad years, but we've stayed here com­mit­ted."

He said there are on­ly a few coun­tries in the world where the right bal­ance be­tween life and work is struck and T&T is one of them. "You get your work done here," he said.

Formed in 1998 in Ab­erdeen, ser­vic­ing pri­mar­i­ly a North Sea clien­tele, Fearn­ley said that af­ter about four years in busi­ness, the com­pa­ny want­ed to branch out in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Britain's BG Group brought the com­pa­ny here in 2002 as a ser­vice provider. "At the time they were look­ing for a com­pa­ny that spe­cialised in re­duc­ing non-pro­duc­tive time," he said. So the com­pa­ny set up an of­fice, em­ployed lo­cals, and sought "to bring some­thing to the lo­cal econ­o­my."

At the time, he said the com­pa­ny had no com­pe­ti­tion ex­cept for one firm out of the US, but it was very ex­pen­sive be­cause it was bring­ing in ex­pats from the US and ro­tat­ing them.Fearn­ley Proc­ter now em­ploys about 15 peo­ple lo­cal­ly, and close to 200 glob­al­ly. Fearn­ley said the com­pa­ny has, how­ev­er, been train­ing lo­cals and now T&T na­tion­als are the largest mi­nor­i­ty work­ing for Fearn­ley Proc­ter, out­num­ber­ing the lo­cal­ly-based group.

"They (T&T cit­i­zens) trav­el well," he said. "And speak the right lan­guage," his wife, Genevieve, in­ter­ject­ed jok­ing­ly. Fearn­ley Proc­ter once held a re­cruit­ment sem­i­nar for Uni­ver­si­ty T&T (UTT) stu­dents pur­su­ing en­er­gy-re­lat­ed de­grees and took on about 15, she said. "The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem here is very good. That's one of the rea­sons we have been suc­cess­ful here," he said.

When asked about which of the 14 na­tion­al­i­ties make the best ex­pats, he said, "I'd have to say T&T. Trinida­di­ans adapt the best. We've had them in most of our lo­ca­tions. I doubt there's a lo­ca­tion where they haven't been."Fearn­ley met his wife, Genevieve, a T&T na­tion­al, at Trot­ters in Port-of-Spain when the com­pa­ny was still young. She is now in charge of hu­man re­sources at the com­pa­ny. They live in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

Drilling can cost over US$750,000 per day

Ex­plain­ing more about what the com­pa­ny does, Fearn­ley said per day cost of drilling a well could be up­ward of US$750,000 de­pend­ing on type of well."When they're drilling the well, if they have equip­ment fail­ure, they tend to call a com­pa­ny like us to do the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said that is how the busi­ness start­ed, serv­ing op­er­a­tors like Shell, BG, BP, BHP Bil­lion, and EOG Re­sources, "re­duc­ing their costs when they drill a well."

How­ev­er, in­spec­tion is just one part of the busi­ness now. Fearn­ley Proc­ter now of­fers qual­i­ty con­trol and qual­i­ty as­sur­ance (QC & QA), en­gi­neer­ing, train­ing, and tech­ni­cal pub­li­ca­tions. Fearn­ley's back­ground is in in­spec­tion, and his part­ner Ray Proc­ter is a drilling en­gi­neer. Fearn­ley start­ed off at age 20 and now has 33 years' ex­pe­ri­ence in the oil and gas busi­ness. Proc­ter has 30 years' ex­pe­ri­ence. To­geth­er they run the com­pa­ny with US$17 mil­lion 2014 pro­ject­ed turnover, and aim to grow that by 25 per cent next year, as they

did last year.

In T&T, the com­pa­ny "goes in­to oil and gas ser­vice com­pa­nies and looks at the in­tegri­ty of their equip­ment," check­ing to make sure they meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of Fearn­ley Proc­ter clients like BP or BG, pri­or to be­ing trans­port­ed to the rig site.Asked if he ex­pects to get a lot of busi­ness with the gov­ern­ment-an­nounced plans for the 31-53 wells to be drilled lo­cal­ly over the next eight years, he said it de­pends on what the cost of the fail­ure is.

If a client has a 30-day well plan and it is go­ing to cost US$750,000 per day, every day not drilling costs mon­ey, he said, and if a piece of equip­ment fails then drilling must be stopped. In a worse case sce­nario, the well could be side-tracked if the equip­ment part is not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able.He said he sees the next growth area for the com­pa­ny in T&T to be in train­ing clients' re­cruits how to han­dle equip­ment, which in turn, will re­sult in "re­duc­ing the oc­cur­rence of equip­ment fail­ure."

He said Fearn­ley Proc­ter is "look­ing to grow the train­ing side of the busi­ness" be­cause T&T na­tion­als are al­ways very keen to ab­sorb train­ing. He said plans for dis­tance learn­ing pro­grammes for ser­vice com­pa­nies are afoot.