An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

While the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG was chal­leng­ing, it is now bet­ter poised to run at op­ti­mum lev­els, de­liv­er gas in the up­com­ing years and keep up with the tough glob­al com­pe­ti­tion.

That’s the rev­e­la­tion from out­go­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ron Adams, dur­ing an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian ear­li­er this week.

The re­struc­tur­ing agree­ment took ef­fect in De­cem­ber 2023, re­sult­ing in one com­pa­ny with three share­hold­ers—bpTT with 45 per cent, Shell 45 per cent and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Ltd (NGC) with 10 per cent—a change from each of the four trains hav­ing dif­fer­ent own­er­ship struc­tures.

Adams was sec­ond­ed by Shell in 2021 for the po­si­tion of CEO at At­lantic, start­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, for a three-year pe­ri­od, which ends on Sep­tem­ber 30. His re­place­ment will be bpTT’s vice pres­i­dent of Trans­for­ma­tion An­drew Ce­lestin who will start the po­si­tion on Oc­to­ber 1.

This would be Ce­lestin’s sec­ond time at At­lantic as he was the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, be­fore re­turn­ing to bpTT.

Adams said every three years there will be a ro­ta­tion of CEO’s at the LNG com­pa­ny be­tween bpTT and Shell.

While he could not, at this time, say ex­act­ly where he is go­ing, Adams said he will re­main with­in the Shell group and his new po­si­tion would not like­ly be in this coun­try.
About the re­struc­tur­ing, he out­lined there were many dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing Train I and its fu­ture and staff were al­ready speak­ing about re­or­gan­is­ing, which was a con­ver­sa­tion that start­ed a cou­ple of years be­fore he took up the po­si­tion of CEO.

“I felt that to be able to get the staff to align and to fo­cus on its fu­ture, to be able to cre­ate a new strat­e­gy for At­lantic that takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the glob­al im­per­a­tives of an en­er­gy tran­si­tion, a world that is mov­ing quick­ly to­wards dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. I thought it was im­por­tant that we do a cou­ple of things. One is to pre­pare the or­gan­i­sa­tion for that fu­ture.

“So, I took the tough de­ci­sion to deal with the Train I is­sue and to get the staff to or­gan­ise it; to rec­og­nize what is the for­ward path­way for At­lantic with re­spect to its fu­ture trains, and al­so to set up that strat­e­gy for the fu­ture,” Adams said.

With the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the com­pa­ny, the CEO said he had the full sup­port of the en­tire lead­er­ship team as man­age­ment was ex­treme­ly trans­par­ent with or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“You know, we laid out the plan, we gave em­ploy­ees op­por­tu­ni­ties to do oth­er jobs, be­cause when you think about it, you have one as­set, you could eas­i­ly find your­self stuck in one job for years. But I think how we con­duct­ed it was as best as we could. I think the fact that we have such an en­er­gised work­force right now speaks to how we would have con­duct­ed that re­or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he dis­closed.

The key tenets of the re­struc­tur­ing speak to the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the struc­ture, as Adams said it’s now one uni­tised com­pa­ny, which al­lows the nat­ur­al gas liq­ue­fac­tion com­pa­ny to be more ef­fi­cient. With the re­duced gas sup­ply, the com­pa­ny is now able to move gas be­tween the three trains seam­less­ly with­out hav­ing to deal with com­plex com­mer­cial arrange­ments.

An­oth­er im­por­tant tenet of the re­struc­tur­ing Adams high­light­ed is that it would al­low third-par­ty ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty. This would en­cour­age con­tin­ued in­vest­ments in the up­stream mar­ket.

In terms of how many work­ers were sent home, Adams said it was be­tween five and 10 per cent, with a staff of 600. How­ev­er, he quick­ly added that with any re­struc­tur­ing it can be emo­tion­al and comes with chal­lenges, but he as­sured that every­thing was done trans­par­ent­ly.

He said it was the best time to em­bark on such an ex­er­cise, to get the or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused and ready to re­ceive more gas.

“We need to find ways to in­crease the lev­el of gas sup­ply in the coun­try. Yes, we’re look­ing at the deep wa­ter. We’re look­ing at max­imis­ing wa­ter in shal­low ar­eas, both off­shore and on land. But there’s a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty with cross-bor­der op­por­tu­ni­ties. So the thing is, we have to make sure that when that gas does be­come avail­able, that the as­set of At­lantic is ready to re­ceive it and run ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.

This is why At­lantic is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar up­grade to its equip­ment, which is about 25 years old and the com­pa­ny has em­barked on an ex­er­cise called a as­set-in­tegri­ty cam­paign, which is be­ing done strate­gi­cal­ly, Adams said.

“A lot of times the on­ly way that we can do sig­nif­i­cant main­te­nance work and sig­nif­i­cant as­set in­tegri­ty work is by tak­ing the plant down. But when the plant is down, you can’t re­ceive the gas. We’ve come up with strate­gies that al­low us now to main­tain that fa­cil­i­ty, to up­grade the fa­cil­i­ty with a run­ning plant. It’s a cam­paign that’s prob­a­bly go­ing to go on for the next three years or so. And so if you think about it, by the time we start get­ting ex­tra gas from Man­a­tee and some of the oth­er projects that are pro­gres­sive­ly be­ing moved on, we will have sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved the in­tegri­ty of the as­set,” the out­go­ing CEO de­tailed.

Safe­ty is key

A pas­sion­ate Adams spoke about the things that can still be done bet­ter with­in the in­dus­try, one be­ing safe­ty. Point­ing to the Paria divers tragedy, he said safe­ty is a con­tin­u­ing jour­ney and the ball should not be dropped.

“En­er­gy com­pa­nies should nev­er get com­fort­able with their safe­ty per­for­mance. We need to con­tin­ue to learn all the lessons that we can from in­ci­dents, learn from each oth­er up­stream, mid­stream, and down­stream, and con­tin­ue that de­gree of col­lab­o­ra­tion. So col­lab­o­ra­tion is not just im­por­tant to pro­duce oil and gas, the col­lab­o­ra­tion is im­por­tant to un­der­stand tech­nol­o­gy and what is avail­able.

“Lessons need to be learned, so that at the end of the day we don’t ever have a re­peat of those kinds of in­ci­dents.

Asked whether Shell’s in­vest­ment in At­lantic has proven to be prof­itable, Adams chuck­led and said “We do have a bit of what we call a Chi­nese wall in this busi­ness that sep­a­rates my­self from those ac­tive dis­cus­sions. What I would say is the fact that Shell con­tin­ues to in­vest in the up­stream end, and oth­er projects that we are work­ing on on the east coast speaks to the fact that Shell sees op­por­tu­ni­ty here and there’s room for con­tin­ued in­vest­ment and it’s a busi­ness that makes sense.”

Look­ing back at his tenure at At­lantic, Adams said it was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty and was he hap­py to help re-en­er­gise the com­pa­ny to move to it to its full po­ten­tial and com­pete with the glob­al com­peti­tors.

At­lantic’s 25th an­niver­sary

At­lantic is cel­e­brat­ing its 25th year since its first ship­ment of LNG in April 1999 on the LNG car­ri­er Matthew. Adams said this is a huge achieve­ment and just re­cent­ly the com­pa­ny shipped over its 4,800th car­go and it is mov­ing to­wards its 5,000 mark.

“At­lantic has em­ploy­ees who were here from that very first car­go, and they’re still here. Re­cent­ly, about a year ago, we em­barked on a re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the At­lantic staff. And I thought when I came in that it was time­ly to do that for a cou­ple of rea­sons.”

He added that At­lantic is com­mem­o­rat­ing its an­niver­sary through var­i­ous ini­tia­tives for its com­mu­ni­ties, stake­hold­ers and em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing launch­ing the At­lantic Schol­ar­ship Pro­gramme de­signed to sup­port the ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits of the chil­dren of its em­ploy­ees.