An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter close to four years lead­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd (HP­CL), the com­pa­ny’s CEO Ar­lene Chow will re­tire, when her suc­ces­sor is in place.

Asked in a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view this month how much longer she is go­ing to be at Her­itage, Chow said, “I told my Board that I would like to re­tire and I said I would hold on un­til they find a suit­able re­place­ment.”

Chow, who has spent 41 years work­ing in the en­er­gy in­dus­try, leaves Her­itage in a good place.

In its 2022 fi­nan­cial year, Her­itage paid the Gov­ern­ment $4.5 bil­lion in roy­al­ties, levies, and tax­es, which was an in­crease from the $2 bil­lion it gen­er­at­ed in 2021.

Last Sun­day, Her­itage re­port­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of $1.11 bil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022. That was an in­crease of 63 per cent com­pared to the prof­it the com­pa­ny de­clared for the 2021 fi­nan­cial year.

Un­der her stew­ard­ship, the oil com­pa­ny has put in place a “ro­bust” for­ward-drilling pro­gramme up to 2025, which en­vis­ages 18 wells off­shore wells and 20 wells on land.

“The for­ward-drilling pro­gramme is the ba­sis of any oil com­pa­ny. Oil com­pa­nies in­crease their pro­duc­tion by drilling,” she said, adding that Her­itage plans to drill five wells this year.

Chow, as well, led the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of Her­itage from a com­pa­ny struc­tured around its as­sets to one more based on its func­tions.

“An as­set or­gan­i­sa­tion, for ex­am­ple, would have em­ploy­ees who are fo­cused on land, which means there would be health and safe­ty em­ploy­ees or IT pro­fes­sion­als for that di­vi­sion,” she said.

“In a func­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion, all the en­gi­neers, ge­ol­o­gists, and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als would be grouped to­geth­er un­der one lead, and their ex­per­tise would be shared across the com­pa­ny.”

Ear­ly in her tenure as the Her­itage CEO, she de­cid­ed to slow down drilling, while the com­pa­ny re­processed seis­mic re­sults for both sea and land, some of which dat­ed back to 1990.

That process of tak­ing an­oth­er look at pre­vi­ous seis­mic stud­ies has re­sult­ed in Her­itage’s land fields at Bar­rack­pore be­ing deemed “a bright spot.”

She said, “We re­processed in Bar­rack­pore and we are see­ing it so much more clear­ly now. It looks hope­ful that there could be prospec­tiv­i­ty in the Pe­nal/Bar­rack­pore area. And our next phase of drilling, next year, is go­ing to be part­ly in that area.”

She al­so led the man­age­ment team at Her­itage through the trau­ma of April 2020, when glob­al oil prices plunged in­to neg­a­tive ter­ri­to­ry, for the first time ever, as oil pro­duc­ers and traders de­cid­ed to of­fload crude oil in­to a mar­ket that was then over­sup­plied as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“I would not say that was me. That was the whole, strong lo­cal lead­er­ship team work­ing in tan­dem to re­solve an im­me­di­ate is­sue, which re­sult­ed in Her­itage tak­ing the de­ci­sion to store crude rather than sell the oil in the weak mar­ket,” Chow added.

On the is­sue of the in­tegri­ty of the as­sets of Her­itage, she point­ed out that 13,000 wells have been drilled on land in Trinidad. Of that num­ber, she es­ti­mat­ed that 3,500 wells are ac­tive. She said pre­vi­ous state oil com­pa­nies did not do much in­tegri­ty man­age­ment “so we can­not even ap­proach those wells or get a rig on them un­til we fix the plat­forms. And you know the say­ing in the sec­tor is that if you do not main­tain one year, you take five years to catch back up. So we are catch­ing back up and it has to take a while.”

Chow said be­tween 2018 and 2022, Her­itage-pro­duced crude pro­duc­tion–as op­posed to the farm out/lease out op­er­a­tions–in­creased by 17 per cent. The lease and farm-out op­er­a­tors in­creased pro­duc­tion by five per cent. That means, over­all, out­put is up by 11 per cent.

Chow did her first de­gree in ge­ol­o­gy and chem­istry at the Mona cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and a Mas­ters in En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da.

The en­er­gy vet­er­an, who start­ed her ca­reer as a ge­ol­o­gist at the state oil com­pa­ny in 1982, is the first fe­male CEO of a na­tion­al oil com­pa­ny in T&T.

For Chow, this will be her sec­ond re­tire­ment. Be­fore Her­itage, she worked as the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of At­lantic LNG, the Point Fortin-based nat­ur­al gas liq­ue­fac­tion com­pa­ny, on sec­ond­ment from BP.

She was at At­lantic from Jan­u­ary 2013 to June 2018 and re­tired from BP in De­cem­ber 2018. Chow re­spond­ed to the call of na­tion­al ser­vice when she joined the whol­ly state-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um as its in­ter­im CEO in Sep­tem­ber 2019. That fol­lowed the de­par­ture of the first Her­itage CEO, Mike Wylie, who re­turned to his home in the US to seek can­cer treat­ment.

She spent over 20 years at en­er­gy ma­jor BP in both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al as­sign­ments. She was the chief of staff of the Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fice in the Pro­duc­tion Di­vi­sion of BP PLC at their head of­fice in Lon­don be­tween 2012 and 2014.

She has al­so held top po­si­tions at BP Alas­ka and at bpTT, she was the VP cor­po­rate op­er­a­tions.