GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

When state-owned oil com­pa­ny Petrotrin in Pointe-a-Pierre closed its doors in No­vem­ber 2018 due to fi­nan­cial loss­es and in­ef­fi­cien­cies, lead­ing to sig­nif­i­cant re­struc­tur­ing in the en­er­gy sec­tor, T&T lost a cor­ner­stone of its econ­o­my for over a cen­tu­ry.

With plans to restart the re­fin­ery by the gov­ern­ment, this would not on­ly mean fresh eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus but Lar­ry Ram­nath, se­nior project man­ag­er for the oil and gas di­vi­sion of en­er­gy con­trac­tor TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny Ltd is adamant that the re­fin­ery’s grounds could once again be a vi­brant train­ing fa­cil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly for young peo­ple want­i­ng a ca­reer in the en­er­gy sec­tor. This would, in turn, re­dound in pos­i­tive ben­e­fits to the coun­try.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Ram­nath said TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny Ltd, which has been in ex­is­tence since 1992, took a big hit when the re­fin­ery closed.

The most sig­nif­i­cant im­pact was the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of skills de­vel­op­ment.

“One of the biggest hits to us was ac­tu­al­ly the re­fin­ery be­cause it was a train­ing ground for most of our en­er­gy per­son­nel.

“You could train in pipe weld­ing, fit­ting, lift­ing, rig­ging, in­su­la­tion, elec­tri­cal, every­thing there. So the in­abil­i­ty to train young peo­ple right now is a ma­jor stum­bling block. It’s just be­cause we had a younger staff who were be­ing trained in the re­fin­ery, we cur­rent­ly have the hu­man cap­i­tal to go for­ward.

“Most of the oth­er con­trac­tors prob­a­bly had aged work­force and they can’t re­plen­ish them right now with the skillset that’s re­quired be­cause of the shut­down of the re­fin­ery,” Ram­nath said, as he wel­comed the move to re­open the re­fin­ery.

While Point Lisas has a train­ing fa­cil­i­ty, Ram­nath said it was lim­it­ed.

“The on­ly oth­er train­ing ground re­al­ly is Point Lisas and it is scal­ing back as some of the plants are shut­ting down. So again, there are less ar­eas in which younger per­sons could come in and be trained to be able to go back out in­to the oth­er ar­eas and oth­er facets of the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

“So it’s hard­er to train young per­sons over­all. For in­stance, I may have five or six brand new per­sons prob­a­bly on their first en­er­gy project ever as my cur­rent project is with Shell and they would prob­a­bly on­ly learn about pipeline in­su­la­tion. I can’t teach them about any­thing else. I’d have to wait un­til some­thing else comes up and there isn’t that amount of work any more.

“So they may lose that skillset be­cause I don’t have any­thing to give them to con­tin­ue. And five years from now, they may prob­a­bly be­come an elec­tri­cian. I lost some­body who could have pro­gressed in­to pipeline con­struc­tion,” Ram­nath ex­plained as he de­scribed the re­fin­ery as the com­pa­ny’s “main stomp­ing ground.”

He added that some of main play­ers the com­pa­ny had dealt with in the past, like larg­er con­trac­tors, have be­come non-ex­is­tent due to the clo­sure.

In this vein, Ram­nath called for part­ner­ships, whether agency or gov­ern­ment, to start mar­ket­ing lo­cal con­trac­tors on the re­gion­al scale when it comes to job gen­er­a­tion.

Ram­nath said this would not on­ly strength­en con­nec­tions for en­er­gy con­trac­tors but could lead to fur­ther em­ploy­ment and in the long term, build and brand the lo­cal en­er­gy in­dus­try.

“So rather than the con­trac­tors try­ing to go to Guyana and Suri­name, the agen­cies here should be part­ner­ing and ask­ing, ‘Why isn’t NGC bid­ding for some of these projects in Suri­name? Why isn’t Her­itage bid­ding for one of these projects? Why aren’t they car­ry­ing across the cur­rent cadre of con­trac­tors along with them and say­ing, ‘Look, we could be an EPC (en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion) con­trac­tor rather than a state en­ti­ty. I have the en­gi­neer­ing and the fi­nan­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ty and I have part­ner­ships with lo­cal con­trac­tors.

“So you don’t bid as a gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment. You bid as an en­ti­ty to the pri­vate sec­tor over there. We could be­come a lit­tle Texas. We have hu­man cap­i­tal here. You just don’t have any way to send them to work,” Ram­nath ad­vised.

He said as a re­sult pro­fes­sion­als in the sec­tor are forced to seek em­ploy­ment out­side the coun­try.

Jack of all trades

TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny Ltd start­ed off in Petrotrin do­ing elec­tri­cal and pipe-fit­ting work.

They then blos­somed in­to oth­er ar­eas in­clud­ing civ­il, me­chan­i­cal, tank con­struc­tion among oth­er things, en­abling the com­pa­ny to be­come one of the ma­jor play­ers in the then re­fin­ery.

When Petrotrin closed, TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny Ltd there­fore, had to find oth­er sources of work, with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T Ltd (NGC) be­com­ing the main av­enue in 2019.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for al­most all of the ma­jor projects to date and most re­cent­ly we worked on the Touch­stone pipeline,” Ram­nath shared.

The com­pa­ny al­so built the pipelines for the Beach­field fa­cil­i­ty in Guayagua­yare, which Ram­nath said has al­lowed NGC to up­grade its con­den­sate fa­cil­i­ty.

TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ex­pand its hori­zons.

Re­cent­ly, it won the Shell Man­a­tee pipeline project.

“The Shell Man­a­tee pipeline is a 32-inch pipeline from the Man­a­tee Field south­east block which comes di­rect­ly on­to the Shell Beach­field fa­cil­i­ty.

“Mc­Der­mott In­ter­na­tion­al is the prime con­trac­tor for Shell. They would be in­stalling about 110 kilo­me­tres of sub­sea pipeline, and they have con­tract­ed us to build the on­shore sec­tion of the pipeline. So when it comes off from the beach, there’s 3.5 kilo­me­tres of pipeline to run on land through the ex­ist­ing right of ways all the oth­er op­er­a­tors, Wood­side, NGC, Her­itage, to run in­to the Shell fa­cil­i­ty, and that feeds back in­to the do­mes­tic gas fa­cil­i­ty, which is the pipeline and NGC fa­cil­i­ty,” Ram­nath said.

He added the project was award­ed in De­cem­ber 2024 with mo­bil­i­sa­tion be­gin­ning this year.

“We mo­bilised on in Feb­ru­ary 11...We phys­i­cal­ly got boots on the ground. Typ­i­cal­ly it takes a cou­ple months to get the doc­u­ments sort­ed, get them pre-ap­proved by the client, all the risk as­sess­ments...That was fi­nal­ly agreed and ap­proved so that we could ac­tu­al­ly mo­bilise equip­ment and man­pow­er fa­cil­i­ties in Feb­ru­ary. So we ac­tu­al­ly broke ground in Feb­ru­ary,” Ram­nath ex­plained.

That project is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by April 2026, which is sup­posed to add to gas to the na­tion­al grid.