Geisha Kow­lessar

The board of the Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny (Petrotrin) was grilled yes­ter­day on the im­pact of cost over­runs and prop­er project man­age­ment at yes­ter­day's Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee sit­ting in Par­lia­ment.New­ly-ap­point­ed Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Camille Robin­son-Reg­is chaired the com­mit­tee, which ex­am­ined the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the years 2008-2011.

Among those who rep­re­sent­ed Petrotrin were its chair­man Lind­say Gillette, deputy chair­man Aleem Ho­sein, di­rec­tor Rudranath Ma­haraj and pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali.The Gillette-led board was in­stalled in Oc­to­ber 2010.The Gaso­line Op­ti­mi­sa­tion Pro­gramme (GOP), which was dis­cussed and which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in 2008, moved from its orig­i­nal bud­get of US$430 mil­lion to US $1.4 bil­lion, Has­sanali told the com­mit­tee.

GOP is de­signed to in­crease the over­all gaso­line yield of the re­fin­ery, as well as im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of the gaso­line prod­uct to meet en­vi­ron­men­tal spec­i­fi­ca­tions.Say­ing the ad­di­tion­al cost of the GOP was ap­proved "every step of the way by Cab­i­net" Has­sanali said there was al­so a steer­ing com­mit­tee to over­see the project.

Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon, who raised the is­sue of bud­getary ex­er­cis­es, ques­tioned whether that was re­al­is­tic on the part of Petrotrin, giv­en the fact that every year the com­pa­ny en­dured some 20 to 30 per cent of cost over­runs."I ex­pect with large projects there will be over­runs but from one year to the next, are you mak­ing er­rors with re­gard to your pro­jec­tions?" Gopee-Scoon asked.In re­sponse Has­sanali said the con­cerns were valid, adding that the board had em­barked on sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to im­prove the sys­tem.

Those, he said, en­tailed not on­ly bud­getary con­trol but al­so project man­age­ment be­cause they were con­nect­ed in terms of the caus­es of the over­runs and al­so the var­i­ous mod­els used for the pro­cure­ment of those ma­jor projects.He added: "We ex­pect this year we will cer­tain­ly make progress. The ma­jor projects are large­ly be­hind us in terms of the de­vel­op­ment of the re­fin­ery, save and ex­cept for the ul­tra-low-sul­phur diesel plant.

"The rest are all be­hind us and our fo­cus from this year and for the next few years is go­ing to be very heav­i­ly on the ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion di­vi­sion."Has­sanali said the com­pa­ny was ex­pect­ed to face chal­lenges in that area but it was "im­prov­ing as it went along."On the is­sue of ocean-bot­tom seis­mic sur­veys, which have caused con­cern to fish­er­men, Gopee-Scoon said she was not "sold on the idea" that Petrotrin had made peace with them.

She added: "My own view is that you have not come up with a pol­i­cy as to how Petrotrin is go­ing to treat with this com­pen­sa­tion mat­ter and par­tic­u­lar­i­ly so be­cause of the im­pov­er­ished ar­eas that are af­fect­ed and where fish­ing re­mains the on­ly in­dus­try."To me you have al­ways tried to side­line the is­sue as though fish will just mi­grate for one day while you do your da­ta in this par­tic­u­lar block and it will come back the next day.

"I'm not sat­is­fied that you have suf­fi­cient­ly and rea­son­ably ex­plained why. I know you have done so in the press but it seems un­re­al­is­tic to me."