When it comes to the en­er­gy tran­si­tion, Pro­man has been ahead of the game.

For the past few years, Pro­man has been ac­tive­ly ad­vo­cat­ing methanol, and in the fu­ture am­mo­nia, as a fu­ture fu­el.

Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Group Op­er­a­tions at Pro­man said the com­pa­ny has been in dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment about the ben­e­fits and po­ten­tial for mak­ing T&T, the methanol bunker­ing hub of the Caribbean for ves­sels, in­clud­ing cruise lines.

“This ini­tia­tive aligns with Pro­man’s wider work to dri­ve the up­take of clean­er fu­els and de­car­bonise the glob­al ship­ping sec­tor. It has the po­ten­tial to at­tract more ves­sels to Trinidad and cre­ate an in­creased de­mand for mar­itime ser­vices (chan­dlery, main­te­nance) there­fore sup­port­ing the growth of Trinidad & To­ba­go’s mar­itime in­dus­try and di­ver­si­fy­ing the over­all na­tion­al econ­o­my. We stand ready to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment in tak­ing this ini­tia­tive for­ward,” he said.

As a clean­er ma­rine fu­el, methanol of­fers sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for de­car­bon­i­sa­tion of the mar­itime sec­tor and oth­er hard-to-abate in­dus­tries.

“Glob­al­ly, the role of methanol as the fu­el of choice for the avi­a­tion, road trans­porta­tion and pow­er gen­er­a­tor in­dus­tries is grow­ing. While the fea­si­bil­i­ty of methanol as a clean­er fu­el with­in these in­dus­tries has been proven, Pro­man wel­comes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with stake­hold­ers to con­duct lo­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies, with the aim of strength­en­ing this coun­try’s path­way to the en­er­gy tran­si­tion,” he said in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness.

He iden­ti­fied some of Pro­man’s in­vest­ments along this line:

* Pro­man’s part­ner­ship with Ste­na Bulk to con­struct six new build methanol-fu­elled ves­sels.

“These ships are us­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 tonnes of methanol as fu­el per year, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the vol­ume of green­house gas emis­sions when com­pared to con­ven­tion­al ma­rine fu­els. To-date, we have launched six low-emis­sion, methanol-fu­elled ves­sels but we are com­mit­ted to tran­si­tion­ing our en­tire fleet of ves­sels to methanol,” he said.

* The AUM fa­cil­i­ty. Mo­hammed said Pro­man’s cor­po­rate ethos has al­ways been to min­imise emis­sions and make the most of every mol­e­cule of feed­stock.

“Which is why we built the AUM down­stream com­plex and al­ready cap­ture and re­cy­cle the CO2 from our am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion in our methanol down­stream plants. Since 2006, al­most 25 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 have been cap­tured from both our own and neigh­bour­ing am­mo­nia plants and re-used. We close­ly re­view our emis­sions pro­file and part of the role of our T&T Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Com­mit­tee is to con­stant­ly re­view op­por­tu­ni­ties across our en­tire port­fo­lio here and iden­ti­fy ways to in­crease en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and fur­ther re­duce emis­sions,” he said.

* The Zan­dolie plat­form. Mo­hammed de­scribed it as “one of our most sig­nif­i­cant green in­vest­ments, which was the lo­cal­ly fab­ri­cat­ed, 100 per cent re­new­ably pow­ered Zan­dolie plat­form.” The plat­form is lo­cat­ed off the Gulf of Paria and is pow­ered whol­ly by wind and so­lar.

* Mo­hammed said Pro­man’s world-scale, Abu Dhabi methanol plant will be one of the world’s most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced and low emis­sion nat­ur­al gas-to-methanol fa­cil­i­ties and in Cana­da, its Varennes Car­bon Re­cy­cling Plant will pro­duce bio-methanol from non-re­cy­clable resid­ual ma­te­r­i­al.

How ex­act­ly will T&T ben­e­fit from that?

In his view, Mo­hammed said T&T will ben­e­fit through Pro­man’s many glob­al, pi­o­neer­ing projects and par­tic­u­lar­ly those projects that sup­port the en­er­gy tran­si­tion. T&T ben­e­fits by de­vel­op­ing a work­force with world-class knowl­edge and skills.

“Through this up­skilling, our na­tion­als di­rect­ly con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and the lo­cal en­er­gy tran­si­tion and im­por­tant­ly, they de­vel­op the ex­per­tise to bet­ter as­sist our Gov­ern­ment in achiev­ing its com­mit­ment to the Unit­ed Na­tions’ 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment,” he said.

He not­ed that the down­stream sec­tor is cur­rent­ly con­strained by the low avail­abil­i­ty of feed­stock.

“How­ev­er, we ac­knowl­edge and ap­plaud the ex­ten­sive ef­forts and achieve­ments made by the Gov­ern­ment and the up­stream sec­tor to se­cure long term gas sup­ply, such as the po­ten­tial for cross-bor­der gas fields (Drag­on and Lo­ran/Man­a­tee) and the op­por­tu­ni­ties to mon­e­tise small­er strand­ed gas fields such as that suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­oped by our up­stream sub­sidiary, De­N­o­vo,” he said.

Lo­cal tal­ent for a glob­al team

From his van­tage point Mo­hammed is able to see the im­pact T&T has on the Switzer­land-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny.

By equal mea­sure, the im­pact Pro­man has to T&T.

“Our in­dus­try is at an in­flex­ion point and I am for­tu­nate to be able to be part of the ex­er­cise to fu­ture proof our busi­ness,” he said.

Be­fore he as­sumed the role of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Group Op­er­a­tions at Pro­man’s Switzer­land head­quar­ters, he was the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions at Pro­man Trinidad.

Mo­hammed said his new role, which he as­sumed in 2022, al­lows him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­face with every as­pect of Pro­man’s busi­ness and peo­ple and pro­vides the op­por­tu­ni­ty to wit­ness first-hand the ben­e­fits of “Pro­man in-coun­try.”

“T&T re­mains the nu­cle­us of our pro­duc­tion. Trin­bag­o­ni­ans com­prise the ma­jor­i­ty of our glob­al head­count and most of our plants are lo­cat­ed here. We be­lieve in this coun­try’s po­ten­tial both from a nat­ur­al and a hu­man re­source per­spec­tive and we are sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­vest­ed in play­ing a ma­jor role in con­tribut­ing to its long-term suc­cess,” he told the Sun­day Busi­ness in an in­ter­view, ahead of Mon­day’s En­er­gy Con­fer­ence.

“I see my­self as an ad­vo­cate for Trinida­di­an tal­ent and just as I have been af­ford­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties, it’s an im­por­tant part of my job to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­ers, in­clud­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure. Through­out our in­dus­try, Trinida­di­ans are a val­ued hu­man re­source com­mod­i­ty. I am filled with pride when I see us ex­cel on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. My goal is to con­tin­ue to pro­vide these op­por­tu­ni­ties, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that with ex­pec­ta­tions there are re­spon­si­bil­i­ties,” he said.

Mo­hammed, a grad­u­ate of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege Ch­agua­nas, ob­tained a BSc. in Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing as well as MSc. in Pro­duc­tion En­gi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment and an MBA, all from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

He said he took the job in Switzer­land as it al­lowed him to con­tribute to the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy and “of­fer a unique per­spec­tive at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el to help shape the fu­ture of our busi­ness.”

“I al­so ad­mit that I do miss be­ing on the plants in Point Lisas at time, par­tic­u­lar­ly the team­work and in­ter­ac­tion that is a key part of this dy­nam­ic en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

He not­ed that through Pro­man’s 14 petro­chem­i­cal plants on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, it’s an eco­nom­ic pow­er­house for this coun­try and plays a ma­jor role in ef­fec­tive­ly max­imis­ing the lo­cal val­ue chain for this coun­try’s ben­e­fit.

“I’m proud to say we re­main the largest em­ploy­er on the Es­tate, with over 1,100 em­ploy­ees and most of our con­tracts, es­pe­cial­ly for plant turn­arounds, are award­ed to lo­cal con­trac­tors. But I would say that this coun­try’s biggest ben­e­fit is through the in­vest­ment we make in our peo­ple. We have a world-class team in Trinidad and we in­vest sig­nif­i­cant­ly in pro­vid­ing glob­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for iour em­ploy­ees to show­case their tal­ent and de­vel­op their skills.

“I have ben­e­fit­ted from this op­por­tu­ni­ty, as have many oth­er mem­bers of the di­as­po­ra, who are lead­ing or work­ing as part of the glob­al team and who proud­ly rep­re­sent this coun­try in all that they do. Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als are em­bed­ded with­in each of our glob­al plants and projects and a num­ber of col­leagues from Trinidad are cur­rent­ly work­ing on the next gen­er­a­tion of glob­al methanol and am­mo­nia projects. Over 10 per cent of our op­er­a­tions team in Trinidad and To­ba­go will be sup­port­ing one of Pro­man’s in­ter­na­tion­al projects in Mex­i­co, Abu Dhabi, Switzer­land, Cana­da and the US,” he said.