Yvonne Webb

Chair­man of the NGC Group of Com­pa­nies Ger­ry C Brooks said yes­ter­day that a num­ber of re-en­gi­neer­ing op­tions are be­ing con­sid­ered for cash-strapped Petrotrin. Al­though he steered clear of a di­rect re­sponse to a ques­tion about the pos­si­ble pri­vati­sa­tion of State-owned com­pa­ny, Brooks said he is op­ti­mistic that the com­pa­ny can be­come prof­itable once more.

Brooks, who was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from re­porters at the re-open­ing of the $4 mil­lion BP Car­rousel Ser­vice Sta­tion in San Fer­nan­do, said: "There is a need to look at how you re-en­gi­neer Petrotrin in a way that is rel­e­vant."

Not­ing that oil prices are cur­rent­ly at US $53 a bar­rel at the height of a very cold win­ter, the chal­lenge is how to re-en­gi­neer Petrotrin to re­struc­ture its debt and im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. He said it is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant that the union, Gvern­ment and the board of Petrotrin ad­dress­NGC those is­sues in the in­ter­est of Petrotrin and the coun­try.

"There are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent mod­els which can be em­ployed. There is the mod­el of Ecopetrol in Co­lum­bia, which was suc­cess­ful­ly fol­lowed and which saw pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship which saw a ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion and which was a re-en­gi­neer­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion," Brooks said.

"It's im­por­tant that we take those bold steps giv­en, one, the debt of Petrotrin, giv­en what's hap­pen­ing in the en­vi­ron­ment and giv­en the need to re-en­gi­neer the or­gan­i­sa­tion."

He sug­gest­ed that stake­hold­ers come to­geth­er "ur­gent­ly but de­lib­er­ate­ly, thought­ful­ly and co-op­er­a­tive­ly" to find a so­lu­tion in the in­ter­est of Petrotrin and T&T

"I am sure var­i­ous re en­gi­neer­ing mod­els have been looked at and they will progress with the guid­ance of the min­is­ter or with the guid­ance of Cor­po­ra­tion Sole."

Brooks, paint­ed a rosy pic­ture of the econ­o­my go­ing for­ward in 2017, as he high­lighed NGC's strate­gic plans.

"We have a team which goes off to Guyana and Suri­name to­mor­row (Thurs­day) be­cause of the im­por­tant find in the Liza- 1, the Liza-2 and the Liza-3 wells there and to work with the gov­ern­ment of Guyana and with the gov­ern­ment of Suri­name to pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port and al­so pro­vide en­gi­neer­ing and pipeline sup­port," he said.

"We had sev­er­al dis­cus­sions on Ghana, we are pro­gress­ing the Venezuela dis­cus­sions in terms of gas com­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go which will im­prove our gas avail­abil­i­ty sit­u­a­tion. Those dis­cus­sions are go­ing well be­tween Shell, our­selves and PDVSA.

"We al­so, through our Na­tion­al En­er­gy Com­pa­ny ,was able to sup­port BP in terms of the Ju­niper plat­form that was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed and is now ac­tu­al­ly off to the Gulf Of Paria, which will al­low the legs to be in­sert­ed and then al­low the Ju­niper plat­form to come on stream, which is ex­pect­ed to come on stream in Q3 of 2017."

Not­ing that there is "a fair amount of good news in the econ­o­my", Brooks said the key was to keep fo­cused, do the work, be en­gaged and work co-op­er­a­tive­ly and in­tel­li­gent­ly

He al­so said the NP/CNG ser­vice ini­tia­tive is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant as it demon­strates co-op­er­a­tion and­pub­lic sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in the in­ter­est of the con­sumer.

"It al­so helps our coun­try as well, be­cause as you know we spent over $4 bil­lion in sub­si­dies and this CNG ini­tia­tive al­lows the coun­try to move to clean­er burn­ing fu­el, brings two state en­ti­ties to­geth­er and pro­vides a far more cost ef­fec­tive fu­el sta­tion," Brooks said.