Sean Nero

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of the fu­ture will not be de­fined by project over­runs and cost es­ca­la­tion, says chair­man Ger­ry Brooks.

In­stead, the state-owned com­pa­ny will be char­ac­terised by pru­dent in­vest­ment, strate­gic ex­pan­sion and new rev­enue in the val­ue chain.

Speak­ing at the NGC Group's Spir­it Awards held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, o Brooks said in a de­lib­er­ate move to re­turn NGC to the prof­it mar­gins en­joyed be­fore the glob­al en­er­gy slump, the com­pa­ny is mov­ing to se­cure and strength­en its present busi­ness by rene­go­ti­at­ing sev­er­al up­stream and down­stream con­tracts.

Hav­ing es­tab­lished sev­er­al mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary teams to achieve this, spe­cial­ists will en­gage in de­tailed prepa­ra­tion, as well as on­trac­tu­al re­cal­i­bra­tion aimed at char­ac­ter­is­ing the com­pa­ny's new ap­proach, Brooks said.

"A new, more ag­ile, bold­er and more fo­cused NGC is emerg­ing. This is nec­es­sary in our new en­er­gy ar­chi­tec­ture. The shale oil rev­o­lu­tion in provinces such as Cana­da, USA, Chi­na, Ar­gen­tine and Colom­bia has posed a gen­uine threat but al­so pro­vides in­vest­ment po­ten­tial and op­por­tu­ni­ty.

A spe­cif­ic team is ex­am­in­ing this as we look care­ful­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly at in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. Every ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny has grown or­gan­i­cal­ly and by ac­qui­si­tion. NGC will em­ploy both ap­proach­es in its thrust to di­ver­si­fy."

He added; "Our team has made three vis­its to Ghana to ex­plore pos­si­bil­i­ties for in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion. A rec­i­p­ro­cal vis­it is ex­pect­ed this Au­gust. A mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing has been ex­e­cut­ed with Ghana's Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion. Ne­go­ti­a­tions are un­der­way with Bulk Oil Sup­plies and Trans­port.

"Two spe­cif­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties–the Tako­ra­di to Tema pipeline and the gas pro­cess­ing plant–are at the feed stage and be­ing analysed. The tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic analy­sis is be­ing care­ful­ly eval­u­at­ed to en­sure right project fit, time­ly ex­e­cu­tion and ap­pro­pri­ate eco­nom­ics."

Ad­dress­ing the mon­etis­ing cross bor­der gas with Venezuela, Brooks said his team and En­er­gy Min­istry of­fi­cials are work­ing in uni­son to achieve this and cross bor­der acreages from fields such as Drag­on are be­ing exlored by lo­cal ex­perts work­ing with Venezue­lan en­er­gy rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Brooks said giv­en T&T's eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and the seis­mic changes in the en­er­gy in­dus­try, the na­tion­al ap­proach and think­ing has to be rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent to en­able NGC to build on the present and cap­ture the fu­ture. He said four decades be­fore NGC was born, the Point Lisas mod­el was just a dream now the com­pa­ny stands at the epi­cen­tre of the Point Lisas mod­el, con­tribut­ing rich­ly to its suc­cess.

The mod­el, ac­cord­ing to Brooks, is the en­vy of the glob­al en­er­gy sec­tor and the as­pi­ra­tion of emerg­ing en­er­gy ju­ris­dic­tions.

"It cre­at­ed un­prece­dent­ed wealth and val­ue for T&T, trans­form­ing our coun­try's GDP from less than US$3,000 per capi­ta to US$20,000 per capi­ta. At NGC, this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is even greater, as we are at the core of our coun­try's hy­dro­car­bon de­vel­op­ment.

"Whether it is our vi­sion to ex­pand the Point Lisas North and South In­dus­tri­al Es­tates; to go down­stream in alu­mini­um pro­cess­ing; es­tab­lish­ing a mar­ket­ing and trad­ing desk across the group; ex­plor­ing al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy to re­alise gov­ern­ment's ob­jec­tive to have 20 per cent of en­er­gy pro­vid­ed by al­ter­na­tive sources, such as Na­tion­al En­er­gy's So­lar­ia Project or ex­pand­ing op­er­a­tions across the hemi­sphere, op­por­tu­ni­ty beck­ons," he said.

"The Gas Mas­ter Plan high­lights pro­found changes in our in­dus­try. We must proac­tive­ly shape a new, bet­ter and more com­pelling fu­ture. Col­lab­o­ra­tion and co-op­er­a­tion across our group are crit­i­cal im­per­a­tives to op­ti­mise in­di­vid­ual and group per­for­mance. It is this ethos and spir­it that must be fos­tered with­in the NGC Group in or­der to cap­i­talise on a chal­leng­ing. Let us turn in­dus­try chal­lenge in­to op­por­tu­ni­ty."