Resh­ma Ra­goonath

TOSL En­gi­neer­ing has ex­pand­ed its part­ner­ship with in­ter­na­tion­al in­no­va­tion com­pa­ny Gen­er­al Elec­tric (GE) to be­come the lo­cal sup­pli­er of GE's new line of mea­sure­ment and con­trol prod­ucts-Bent­ly Neva­da.On Tues­day, TOSL CEO Shaz­an Ali and Jose Aven­dano, GE's chan­nel part­ner man­ag­er for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, un­veiled the ex­pand­ed part­ner­ship be­tween both com­pa­nies dur­ing TOSL's one day sem­i­nar-Bent­ly Neva­da Day at Cara Suites Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Clax­ton Bay.

Ali, speak­ing with TG Busi­ness at the event, said GE's for­mer CEO Jack Welch, who was vot­ed man of the cen­tu­ry last year, want­ed to make that com­pa­ny num­ber one or two in every field it was in­volved in and he (Ali) want­ed to make TOSL the same.

"Our feel­ing at our com­pa­ny is that we should be num­ber one in T&T and there­fore we wish to part­ner with the best and we think GE is the best in the oil and gas in­dus­try. And GE is ex­pand­ing their reach in the oil and gas in­dus­try," Ali said. He ex­plained that in March he met with GE of­fi­cials in Hous­ton where he was ex­posed to the lat­est in­no­va­tions at the US-based firm and was im­pressed.

Ali said TOSL and GE had been part­ners for some time now. How­ev­er, TOSL, he said, de­cid­ed to ex­pand the ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship and in­crease the va­ri­ety of GE prod­ucts it has to of­fer to the lo­cal oil and gas in­dus­try.He said he was con­fi­dent that the new part­ner­ship would be prof­itable for both TOSL and GE es­pe­cial­ly with in­creased ex­plo­ration and drilling ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T.

"They (GE) are bring­ing a lot of new tech­nol­o­gy to the fore­front in the oil and gas in­dus­try es­pe­cial­ly for deep sea drilling and ex­plor­ing. We are go­ing to see them as a force to be reck­oned with as we get in­to deepsea drilling in Trinidad. That is one of the main rea­son why we are fo­cused on GE," he said.

ALi said TOSL was look­ing at GE prod­ucts in the mea­sure­ment and con­trol area and Bent­ly Neva­da, which is vi­bra­tion mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment. "We have been in the vi­bra­tion busi­ness since 1996 and pre­dic­tive main­te­nence and we have a long as­so­ci­a­tion with GE and we are ex­pand­ing that reach. We want to be the GE one stop shop in Trinidad that is what we want to be and hope to build up­on," Ali added.Ali said he ex­pect­ed that the new part­ner­ship would boost TOSL's sales.

"It is ex­pect­ed that GE will be a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of our sales. We earn US$40M a year and we ex­pect that GE sales will be 20 to 25 per cent of that," Ali added.Aven­dano, in his pre­sen­ta­tion, said GE was pleased to part­ner with TOSL and as­sured that the com­pa­ny stood ready to meet the tech­no­log­i­cal needs of all oil and gas com­pa­nies in T&T.

Yes­ter­day's event fea­tured prod­uct dis­plays and pre­sen­ta­tions on GE's Bent­ly Neva­da line of prod­ucts, in­clud­ing its spec­i­fi­ca­tions and ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty to the lo­cal oil and gas in­dus­try. At­ten­dees at the in­au­gur­al event in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from At­lantic LNG and IP­SL.TOSL al­so had dis­plays of some of the prod­ucts used for mon­i­tor­ing ro­tat­ing equip­ment and com­pres­sors.