KY­RON REG­IS

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

The CEO of At­lantic LNG, Dr Philip Mshel­bi­la has con­tend­ed that there are signs that de­mand for en­er­gy is on the rise once again. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that the in­crease has been slug­gish.

Speak­ing at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T’s (AM­CHAM T&T) 2020 HSSE con­fer­ence, Mshel­bi­la said: “The glob­al LNG busi­ness has ex­pe­ri­enced a con­trac­tion, as re­duced eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty around the world has had a knock-on ef­fect on de­mand for nat­ur­al gas and LNG. For­tu­nate­ly, there are signs that glob­al de­mand for en­er­gy is be­gin­ning to re­cov­er, al­beit slow­ly.”

At­lantic LNG’s CEO as­sert­ed that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate through the storm in the midst of be­ing buf­fet­ed by wind and waves that seem to as­sault its ex­is­tence. He added that en­er­gy prices re­main low­er than they were, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ush­er­ing a new era of even more tar­get­ed cost man­age­ment and en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy across the in­dus­try.

In spite of this, Mshel­bi­la ar­gued that there can be no com­pro­mise on the safe­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of At­lantic LNG’s busi­ness. He added that the prac­tice of HSSE and its con­tri­bu­tion to busi­ness vi­a­bil­i­ty and suc­cess has be­come even more crit­i­cal dur­ing the glob­al pan­dem­ic.

Mshel­bi­la said: “At At­lantic, re­silience in these times has meant that our busi­ness has had to evolve. We have had to dis­cov­er in­no­v­a­tive ways to de­liv­er our tar­gets, to man­age risks both pri­or and new and to keep our peo­ple safe and pro­duc­tive.”

In re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic that has rav­aged so­ci­eties and economies, Mshel­bi­la dis­closed that At­lantic LNG de­vel­oped and ac­ti­vat­ed its COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic Re­sponse Plan, where three key prin­ci­ples have guid­ed the com­pa­ny from the on­set.

Ac­cord­ing to Mshel­bi­la, At­lantic LNG re­solved that it would pro­tect the health and safe­ty of its em­ploy­ees, sus­tain safe and re­li­able op­er­a­tions for as long as pos­si­ble, and pro­vide care and sup­port where fea­si­ble to all of its stake­hold­ers, es­pe­cial­ly in its home com­mu­ni­ty of Point Fortin.

He ar­gued that ever since these three prin­ci­ples have been foun­da­tion­al to the com­pa­ny’s ex­pe­ri­ences. At­lantic’s Pres­i­dent added that in the months fol­low­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the na­tion­al lock-down his com­pa­ny has been dis­cov­er­ing its col­lec­tive re­silience and build­ing up­on it.

“At­lantic has ex­pe­ri­enced no im­pact to our pro­duc­tion. We have been able to keep to our sched­ule for main­te­nance of our Trains. We have de­liv­ered four main­te­nance out­ages with­in bud­get, on time and most im­por­tant­ly, we have de­liv­ered them safe­ly.”

The CEO added that a big part of the com­pa­ny’s pan­dem­ic re­sponse has been pow­ered by tech­nol­o­gy. He said that some of the state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives that the com­pa­ny has em­barked up­on in light of the pan­dem­ic have be­come the plat­forms that fa­cil­i­tate re­mote work­ing and oth­er nec­es­sary evo­lu­tions of the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s busi­ness mod­el.