The Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T is ex­pand­ing its op­er­a­tions to take ad­van­tage of the niche with­in the re­gion­al mar­ket, its chair­man Con­rad Enill, has stat­ed in its an­nu­al re­port for 2020.

Last year Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s re­gion­al thrust was ad­vanced fol­low­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary in Guyana and the es­tab­lish­ment of an op­er­at­ing of­fice in George­town.

“On the re­gion­al front, our Guyana of­fice will con­tin­ue to act as the con­duit for po­si­tion­ing and mar­ket­ing The NGC Group’s ser­vices through­out the Guyana-Suri­name basin,” Enill stat­ed.

“Guyana has re­vealed a dy­nam­ic de­vel­op­men­tal agen­da as the coun­try tran­si­tions to be­com­ing an oil and gas-based econ­o­my. This de­vel­op­ment is strong­ly aligned to the ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­per­tise and suite of ser­vices that re­side with­in the Group,” he added.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s pres­i­dent Dr Ver­non Pal­too said re­gion­al­ly, the com­pa­ny’s off­shore sup­port ves­sel, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Ex­plor­er, was suc­cess­ful in its bid to pro­vide short-term off­shore sup­port ser­vices in Suri­name, there­by en­hanc­ing the foot­print for the Com­pa­ny in the South Amer­i­ca ju­ris­dic­tion.

“The ser­vice in­clud­ed crew and car­go trans­porta­tion from Ch­aguara­mas to Suri­name, for Petronas’ now suc­cess­ful off­shore ex­plo­ration op­er­a­tions. Dur­ing the 2020 pe­ri­od, as a mit­i­ga­tion mea­sure against ex­po­sure to the virus, the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Ex­plor­er was al­so used as ac­com­mo­da­tion—a “floa­tel”, en­abling crews to co­coon with­in the port area safe­ly,” Pal­too stat­ed.

Enill said that Na­tion­al En­er­gy re­mains cog­nisant of the fact that to grow its busi­ness, it needs to pur­sue new ar­eas to of­fer its ser­vices and em­brace the emer­gent sus­tain­able en­er­gy fu­ture.

“To this end, the com­pa­ny en­deav­oured to ce­ment its sus­tain­able en­er­gy strat­e­gy by se­cur­ing fund­ing from the IDB to sup­port fea­si­bil­i­ty work geared to­wards un­der­stand­ing the eco­nom­ic pa­ra­me­ters of pro­duc­ing green hy­dro­gen lo­cal­ly. The find­ings of this study will pro­vide a path to a green­er en­er­gy sec­tor,” he stat­ed.

Enill said an­oth­er po­si­tion­ing strat­e­gy that is ex­pect­ed to bear fruit for Na­tion­al En­er­gy was the “de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion” to ap­point a gen­er­al man­ag­er for the La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Labid­co).

“Labid­co plays a unique role in pro­vid­ing in­dus­tri­al land, port, lo­gis­tics, and biore­me­di­a­tion ser­vices, all at com­pet­i­tive prices for the La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. It is en­vi­sioned that this strate­gic move will strength­en the Com­pa­ny’s gov­er­nance struc­ture to bet­ter achieve its man­date,” he stat­ed.

“As Na­tion­al En­er­gy and The NGC Group look be­yond the pan­dem­ic, we are em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reimag­ine work, the work­force, and the work­place to de­ter­mine what are the op­ti­mal sce­nar­ios that would en­sure max­i­mum re­turn to the or­gan­i­sa­tions. This re­view may lead to fun­da­men­tal changes in how we op­er­ate and how we re­source our ac­tiv­i­ties to meet our man­date and de­liv­er on our vi­sion and mis­sion in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment,” he stat­ed.

Enill re­vealed that an­oth­er high-stake project was the SAP C/4 HANA ini­tia­tive.

“Launched in 2019, the im­ple­men­ta­tion phase con­tin­ued in 2020. This sys­tem, once ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed, will pro­vide full vis­i­bil­i­ty, plan­ning, au­toma­tion and con­trol of process­es and sched­ules for our com­mer­cial as­sets, and of­fer an en­hanced cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence from book­ing to billing, there­by im­prov­ing over­all op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy. As we move for­ward, process im­prove­ment and in­no­va­tion, through tech­nol­o­gy, will be em­bed­ded in our think­ing and sys­tems, as we seek to ex­tract max­i­mum val­ue through­out all our busi­ness seg­ments,” Enill stat­ed.

The SAP C/4 HANA Project is a dig­i­tal book­ing to billing plat­form to “im­prove over­all op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and en­hance the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in our port and towage op­er­a­tions.”

Phase 1 of the project tar­get­ed au­toma­tion and digi­ti­sa­tion of the towage book­ing to billing process with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Field Ser­vices Man­age­ment.

Enill said that as Na­tion­al En­er­gy and The NGC Group look be­yond the pan­dem­ic, the plan is to em­brace the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reimag­ine work, the work­force, and the work­place to de­ter­mine what are the op­ti­mal sce­nar­ios that would en­sure max­i­mum re­turn to the or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“This re­view may lead to fun­da­men­tal changes in how we op­er­ate and how we re­source our ac­tiv­i­ties to meet our man­date and de­liv­er on our vi­sion and mis­sion in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment,” he stat­ed.

In 2020 Na­tion­al En­er­gy record­ed its eighth con­sec­u­tive year of prof­itabil­i­ty with an af­ter-tax prof­it of $59 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, this year’s was a de­crease of $29.15 mil­lion from 2019’s af­ter-tax prof­it.

In 2019, Na­tion­al En­er­gy record­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of $88 mil­lion.

“This per­for­mance was achieved de­spite the plunge in busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the sec­tor, brought on by the pan­dem­ic,” Enill stat­ed.

In 2020, Na­tion­al En­er­gy’s to­tal rev­enue de­creased by 14.2 per cent to $308.46 mil­lion from the 2019 amount of $359.34 mil­lion.

This was said to have re­sult­ed main­ly from re­duced op­er­at­ing rev­enue from the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on all rev­enue streams.

“The year 2020 brought some harsh re­al­i­ties due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic; thus, our op­er­a­tions’ sus­tain­abil­i­ty was a fo­cal area for this re­port­ing cy­cle. With that be­ing said, as we re­flect on what was 2020, it gives me great plea­sure to re­port that, notwith­stand­ing the ad­ver­si­ties faced lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly, the com­pa­ny re­mained stead­fast in its ap­proach to ef­fi­cien­cy and de­liv­ery,” Pal­too stat­ed.

“The year 2020 showed Na­tion­al En­er­gy to be “more ready, than not” since the com­pa­ny re­mained res­olute in sup­port­ing The NGC Group’s vi­sion,” he stat­ed.

Pal­too said al­though there were set­backs caused by the pan­dem­ic, its stake­hold­ers, en­sured that they re­mained on track to achieve its key busi­ness de­liv­er­ables suc­cess­ful­ly.

“Our suc­cess­es in this re­gard did not oc­cur by chance but rather through hard work, com­mit­ment, and a keen will­ing­ness to adapt to a sit­u­a­tion in which we had no con­trol. We have all learnt a valu­able les­son for 2020, that we can­not pre­dict the fu­ture,” Pal­too said.

“Notwith­stand­ing, we will re­main fo­cused on our man­date and ap­proach 2021 with a shared vi­sion and re­in­forced knowl­edge that to­geth­er, Na­tion­al En­er­gy will suc­ceed in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the cre­ation of a sus­tain­able en­er­gy fu­ture for T&T,” he stat­ed.