The en­er­gy sec­tor has a new play­er. Her name is Michelle des Etages and she is the CEO of Re­nais­sance En­er­gy Ltd, a small, ma­ture but vi­able oil field in south Trinidad.

But that’s not all.

Des Etages, 52, now has the ho­n­our of be­ing this coun­try’s first fe­male in­de­pen­dent oil pro­duc­er, among a field of 19 in­de­pen­dent op­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing both lease and farm-out.

Her com­pa­ny, apt­ly named us­ing the French word for re­birth, is a 100 per cent lo­cal­ly-owned and fam­i­ly-run com­pa­ny based in GP Road, Bar­rack­pore.

“This 18.8-hectare field was ac­quired from for­mer op­er­a­tor and en­er­gy ex­pert Dr Kr­ish­na Per­sad in 2018,” she said.

Com­pris­ing then of 15 wells of which on­ly three were in pro­duc­tion and sev­en with vi­able po­ten­tial, des Etages said Re­nais­sance was able to in­crease the num­ber of pro­duc­ing wells from three to 10, adding that the plans are to have all 15 wells op­er­a­tional.

“This trans­lates to an over 300 per cent in­crease in dai­ly pro­duc­tion in just four years,” des Etages said.

But these weren’t a nor­mal four years.

Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, 2018 to 2022, we would have wit­nessed a world­wide shut­down due to the COVID pan­dem­ic and a pe­ri­od when oil prices plum­met­ed be­low US$0. But de­spite these ob­sta­cles, this new en­er­gy com­pa­ny did not on­ly sur­vive, it pros­pered.

“And un­like many com­pa­nies, we were able to do so with­out the loss of jobs.

“Fam­i­ly means a lot to me, both my fam­i­ly at home and at work,” says des Etages who has two sons, both work­ing with her at Re­nais­sance.

Jean Le, 27, works in HSSE and ad­min­is­tra­tion, and Nicoli, 23, is part of op­er­a­tions and pro­duc­tion, with her broth­er An­der­son Ma­habir who is head of the pro­cure­ment de­part­ment.

“Be­ing able to keep every­one on staff for that du­ra­tion was my mea­sure of suc­cess,” des Etages said adding that con­tent­ed work­ers make for a pro­duc­tive work­force.

Her team was al­so able to meet all their con­trac­tu­al pro­duc­tion tar­gets set out by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um with­out the in­tro­duc­tion of any new wells.

“This field is a ma­ture one with the first farm out giv­en in De­cem­ber 1989. De­spite this, with con­tin­u­ous and ef­fi­cient well in­ter­ven­tion workovers, we were able to main­tain a very pro­duc­tive field,” said des Etages.

She al­so at­trib­uted the com­pa­ny’s growth to her en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it com­bined with her pro­fes­sion as an ac­coun­tant.

From ear­ly on, run­ning a busi­ness was her cho­sen path.

Start­ing off as a video club own­er decades ago when rent­ing videos was the thing to do on the week­ends, to dab­bling in com­put­er sales and re­al es­tate while study­ing, to free­lanc­ing as an ac­coun­tant for small com­pa­nies, des Etages’ ad­vice for en­tre­pre­neurs is: “Nev­er get too com­fort­able in your en­vi­ron­ment and don’t be afraid to jump in and take that chal­lenge.”

Those two prin­ci­ples of not set­tling and fear­less­ness, have guid­ed her through life, a life which was not with­out many chal­lenges.

“I was di­vorced at age 32 with two young boys and no per­ma­nent job. The flex­i­bil­i­ty need­ed for work-life bal­ance and more so to sur­vive I found in work­ing for my­self,” she added.

“With every ven­ture I stepped in­to, I learned as much as I could. And not know­ing much about a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness was not a de­ter­rent for me. I had very lim­it­ed knowl­edge about run­ning an oil­field, for ex­am­ple, but I re­ceived guid­ance from ma­jor ex­perts in the in­dus­try. Years of ex­pe­ri­ence in ac­count­ing, plan­ning, and the abil­i­ty to bal­ance fi­nances while tak­ing cal­cu­lat­ed risks paid off for me,” des Etages said, adding, “and I am still learn­ing.”

“From very ear­ly on in the pan­dem­ic, even be­fore manda­to­ry re­stric­tions were put in place na­tion­wide, Re­nais­sance was one of the first op­er­a­tors to es­tab­lish and main­tain pro­to­cols. I say with pride that every­one on the team is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. Giv­en the rise in COVID num­bers, we have al­ready start­ed to rein­tro­duce safe­ty pro­to­col to keep the team healthy and safe,” she said.

This proac­tive ap­proach seems to ex­tend to all as­pects of the busi­ness.

In ad­di­tion to con­tin­u­ous workovers, Re­nais­sance plans to drill its first two shal­low wells in this first quar­ter us­ing a snub­bing unit.

A snub­bing unit, al­so called a hy­draulic workover unit, is used for in­ter­ven­tion on live or dead wells. Its small foot­print makes it eco­nom­i­cal to drill shal­low wells.

“The team is ex­cit­ed as it will be the first time us­ing a snub­bing unit on land in T&T,” said des Etages adding that, “Re­nais­sance would al­so like to ac­quire ad­di­tion­al acreage.”

Delv­ing in­to the fu­ture of the com­pa­ny des Etages shared: “Re­nais­sance em­braces en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious prac­tices and in­no­v­a­tive meth­ods in what­ev­er we do.”

This refers to the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to work with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in its draft Pol­i­cy to Cre­ate Car­bon Cap­ture Util­i­sa­tion and Stor­age (CCUS) spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion.

Giv­en that T&T is a sig­na­to­ry to the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change, Ky­oto Pro­to­col, and the Paris Agree­ment, steps must be tak­en to re­duce our car­bon emis­sions and to meet the tar­get of cut­ting emis­sions by 15 per cent by 2030.

“In keep­ing with this, Re­nais­sance is pledg­ing to re­duce the harm­ful ef­fects of glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change with a cam­paign to se­quester all car­bon de­posits pro­duced at the fa­cil­i­ty by re-in­ject­ing in­to ded­i­cat­ed wells al­ready des­ig­nat­ed,” said des Etages.

C02 se­ques­ter­ing is a proven best prac­tice for the cap­tur­ing and stor­ing of car­bon diox­ide with the goal of re­duc­ing the amount of CO2 in the at­mos­phere.

“The ben­e­fits are en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, and eco­nom­i­cal,” she added.

When asked about the fu­ture of oil and the fu­ture of Re­nais­sance, its CEO said: “The world over is phas­ing out fos­sil fu­els. But this will take time. To­mor­row, there will still be oil and the need for it al­so. Re­nais­sance En­er­gy is al­so po­si­tion­ing it­self for the fu­ture by di­ver­si­fy­ing its en­er­gy port­fo­lio and by ex­plor­ing new en­er­gy sources.”