Hema Ramkissoon

In 2021, Ronald Adams, be­came the first Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al to be ap­point­ed the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of At­lantic LNG.

Adams’ ap­point­ment oc­curred in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic and a glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, de­spite the pre­vail­ing cli­mate, he de­scribed the last year as “chal­leng­ing, in­ter­est­ing and re­ward­ing.”

With over 30 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence, Adams, an em­ploy­ee of Shell who was sec­ond­ed to the po­si­tion, said he has al­ways looked to a chal­lenge and saw the At­lantic ap­point­ment as no dif­fer­ent.

In his first me­dia in­ter­view since as­sum­ing the role, Adams touch­es on a wide range of top­ics in­clud­ing his role as CEO, the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, strat­e­gy and Train 1.

On the heels of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed en­er­gy con­fer­ence, Adams is cog­nisant of the tran­si­tions tak­ing place in the sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly the move to clean en­er­gy.

En­er­gy Tran­si­tion

The In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency fore­casts the world’s to­tal re­new­able-based pow­er ca­pac­i­ty to in­crease to 50 per cent be­tween 2019 and 2024. Many ma­jor oil and gas com­pa­nies are ac­cel­er­at­ing spend­ing on and di­ver­si­fy­ing in­to re­new­able and low car­bon en­er­gy in re­sponse to grow­ing con­cerns over cli­mate change.

In 2016, Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-four (174) oth­er coun­tries, signed the Paris Cli­mate Change Agree­ment. In 2018, &T de­posit­ed its In­stru­ment of Rat­i­fi­ca­tion, sig­nalling the for­mal com­mit­ment to re­duce this na­tion’s Green­house Gas (GHG) emis­sions.

T&T’s Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion (NDC) un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) is based on its Car­bon Re­duc­tion Strat­e­gy. The Car­bon Re­duc­tion Strat­e­gy was de­vel­oped for the ma­jor emit­ting sec­tors, name­ly pow­er gen­er­a­tion, trans­porta­tion and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors. It is con­sis­tent with im­ple­ment­ing the pro­vi­sions of the Na­tion­al Cli­mate Change Pol­i­cy. The aim of Trinidad & To­ba­go is to achieve a re­duc­tion in over­all emis­sions from the three (3) sec­tors by 15 per cent by 2030 from Busi­ness as Usu­al (BAU), which in ab­solute terms is an equiv­a­lent of one hun­dred and three mil­lion tonnes (103,000,000) of car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent (CO2e).

Adams told the Busi­ness Guardian “Trinidad and To­ba­go has been a glob­al play­er in the en­er­gy busi­ness for many decades. There is a new wave go­ing through the en­er­gy busi­ness glob­al­ly by way of the en­er­gy tran­si­tion. The world is seek­ing more and more en­er­gy, but they are re­quir­ing that en­er­gy be as clean as pos­si­ble.”

He ad­mit­ted that tran­si­tion­ing to a re­duced car­bon foot­print is key to re­main­ing com­pet­i­tive and share­hold­ers un­der­stand that, but it can’t hap­pen with the flick of a switch.

At­lantic’s CEO not­ed that sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments have been made over the years in­to tra­di­tion­al hy­dro­car­bons.

He posit­ed that the sec­tor must demon­strate to key stake­hold­ers, new and ex­ist­ing mar­kets, that they are tran­si­tion­ing, and chang­ing the car­bon foot­print through plans and projects.

In re­la­tion to At­lantic LNG, Adams said, “We have been work­ing on mak­ing in­fra­struc­ture and equip­ment more ef­fi­cient and chang­ing the tech­nol­o­gy of the op­er­a­tions to re­duce emis­sions, we are see­ing a grad­ual but de­lib­er­ate re­duc­tion in our car­bon foot­print.”

He ex­plained that At­lantic has iden­ti­fied where 20-30 per cent of the emis­sions are gen­er­at­ed and is com­mit­ted to a 20 per cent re­duc­tion in emis­sions over the next four to five years.

He re­vealed that, it is a mul­ti-phased project over the next 5 to 10 years and the sec­ond phase will con­sists of elec­tri­fi­ca­tion.

A 2021 re­port ti­tled, Mak­ing Clean Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion Pos­si­ble: 30 Years to Elec­tri­fy the Glob­al Econ­o­my, is­sued the En­er­gy Tran­si­tions Com­mis­sion es­ti­mat­ed that elec­tric­i­ty could rep­re­sent up to 70 per cent of fi­nal en­er­gy de­mand by 2050, ver­sus 20 per cent to­day.

Strat­e­gy

Adams is con­fi­dent that At­lantic will con­tin­ue to suc­ceed and his con­fi­dence is built up­on what he has de­scribed as a “Re­freshed and evolved strat­e­gy.”

The strat­e­gy is built on sev­er­al com­po­nents in­clud­ing—safe­ty, peo­ple, en­vi­ron­ment, sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects and gas avail­abil­i­ty.

He recog­nised the gas sup­ply chal­lenges of the past, but iden­ti­fied the goal of cre­at­ing a plant, that is ca­pa­ble and ready to re­ceive and process every mol­e­cule of gas.

“We have set up our­selves, our equip­ment and our peo­ple in a man­ner to achieve this,” Adams told the Busi­ness Guardian.

To en­sure the strate­gies are aligned to in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices, Adams, iden­ti­fied glob­al bench­mark­ing and key met­rics, as para­mount to en­sur­ing max­i­mum re­turn.

Peo­ple

With the litany of plans on the ta­ble, is the At­lantic staff ca­pa­ble of at­tain­ing these glob­al met­rics?

Adams is con­fi­dent it can.

“There are core things that would re­main con­stant—the front-line work­ers, the folks sit­ting in front of the con­sole and op­er­at­ing the fa­cil­i­ties, they and crit­i­cal, and we have some of the best in the world, our work­ers have al­ways been sought af­ter. But with this tran­si­tion, we have found our­selves in a po­si­tion where we need now to work with our peo­ple to sharp­en those new skills that al­low us to change our mode of op­er­a­tions and to re­main com­pet­i­tive.”

He said from in­cep­tion, the At­lantic em­ploy­ee base has demon­strat­ed they can com­pete and hold their own. Adams said he has been asked to build on that sol­id base and get the or­gan­i­sa­tion ready for a chal­leng­ing fu­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to Adams, five to ten years ago the fu­ture of the en­er­gy busi­ness be­came clear “the dri­ve to­ward re­new­ables was go­ing to be key for con­ti­nu­ity and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of op­er­a­tions. That topped with a pan­dem­ic and glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, asked all in the busi­ness to think

From page BG4

deeply on how to re­main com­pet­i­tive.

First Lo­cal CEO

Adams, who is an em­ploy­ee of Shell, has been sec­ond­ed to the role of CEO for and will re­turn to Shell at the end of the pe­ri­od.

When asked about the im­por­tance of the ap­point­ment, Adams sim­ply said it is a “great ho­n­our to be the first lo­cal CEO to lead such an im­por­tant or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

He gave cred­it to the lo­cals who have walked in­to lead­er­ship roles be­fore him in the en­er­gy sec­tor and have paved the way for him.

“If you look at dy­nam­ic of lo­cal lead­er­ship, the dy­nam­ic of Trinida­di­an lead­er­ship, I can think of folks like Robert Ri­ley and Derek Hud­son. I have ben­e­fit­ed from be­ing able to have dis­cus­sions, to talk about the en­er­gy busi­ness, to talk about the nu­ances of be­ing a lo­cal leader in a glob­al space. I’ve been able to talk about what it rep­re­sents.”Adams told the BG.

He said the ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing a tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od in the com­pa­ny and sec­tor’s his­to­ry has been im­por­tant to his de­vel­op­ment.

Adams said he re­mains com­mit­ted to the ideals of hard work, re­silience and a se­ri­ous dose of hu­mil­i­ty while em­brac­ing every day as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn.

Re­gion­al

With the con­ver­sa­tions in­ten­si­fy­ing around Guyana and Suri­name, can Trinidad and To­ba­go and At­lantic LNG re­main rel­e­vant?

Adams said the re­gion­al con­ver­sa­tions can ben­e­fit all, “I look at this as a re­gion, with what is hap­pen­ing in Guyana and Suri­name and oth­er is­lands pur­su­ing a sim­i­lar agen­da, it is good for the re­gion.”

If you look at the TT agen­da, “we are lead­ing in the space of gas, we have a long his­to­ry of tran­si­tion­ing from oil to gas....We have the ex­pe­ri­ence and in­fra­struc­ture that is large­ly a de­pre­ci­at­ed as­set, and that for the in­vestors is a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage when you con­sid­er the cost of build­ing a new plant. We al­ready have in­fra­struc­ture and ca­pac­i­ty here.”

With the fo­cus on gen­er­at­ing new sources of gas, Adams said he can think of some of the projects that will come on in the lat­er part of this decade, that will bring in­cre­men­tal gas, that will find its way through At­lantic and the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.

He is con­fi­dent that if con­ver­sa­tions con­tin­ue to take place, it will al­low for en­hanced op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“If we are able to un­lock that and deal with the geopol­i­tics sur­round­ing that then we have es­sen­tial­ly a well run, well sup­port­ed in­fra­struc­ture that al­lows our share­hold­ers to get to their glob­al mar­kets in a com­pet­i­tive man­ner , that is sig­nif­i­cant ad­van­tage.”Adams ar­gued.

Train 1

On the is­sued of Train 1 Adams said it is un­der­stand­able that Train 1 dis­cus­sion gen­er­ate such in­ter­est and that a con­ver­sa­tion is tak­ing place which is not an easy one among the share­hold­ers of At­lantic LNG , the gov­ern­ment and in­ter­est­ed par­ties.

“Those dis­cus­sions, as I am aware are pro­gress­ing qui­et well ,and they are im­por­tant for a cou­ple of rea­sons. In an en­vi­ron­ment where we have con­strained gas re­sources- any de­ci­sions that are made to sim­pli­fy the com­mer­cial and gov­er­nance struc­tures of At­lantic LNG as it is to­day, is go­ing to help us all, to put our­selves in a po­si­tion to process all avail­able gas, and to process it as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble.” Adams told the BG.

The At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty com­pris­es four LNG Trains, each with dif­fer­ent share­hold­er struc­tures and com­mer­cial arrange­ments

Train One: Shell 46 &, BP 34 per cent, NGC ten per cent, CIC ten per cent.

Train Two: Shell 57.5 per cent, BP 42.5 per cent.

Train Three: Shell 57.5 per cent, BP 42.5 per cent.

Train Four: Shell 51.11 per cent, BP 37.78 per cent, NGC 11.11 per cent.

Adams said, the orig­i­nal struc­ture is a com­plex one.

He ex­plained, “The re­al­i­ty is con­ver­sa­tions are tak­ing place and in the full­ness of time we will land an arrange­ment that would seek to en­sure that At­lantic is sus­tain­able not on­ly for the next 5 years. But my un­der­stand­ing is that we are putting this arrange­ment in place so that we can have a com­pet­i­tive arrange­ment that is pro­duc­ing LNG in a sus­tain­able, com­pet­i­tive and ef­fi­cient man­ner for en­hanced suc­cess for the 20 to 30, of even 40 years.”

Adams is con­fi­dent that the right con­ver­sa­tions are hap­pen­ing and is con­fi­dent where At­lantic in­put is sought that it is head­ing the di­rec­tion.

He steered clear of di­vulging a time­line for the com­ple­tion of those talks and would on­ly say, “It would be dif­fi­cult to put a time­line on this con­ver­sa­tion, the dis­cus­sions are hap­pen­ing, its high on every­one’s agen­da.