GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Three tal­ent­ed young women con­tin­ue to fly the flags of Pro­man and T&T high, us­ing their knowl­edge and ex­per­tise to not on­ly help take the com­pa­ny for­ward but al­so the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

Safiyyah Ali, Lean­na Ho­sein and Danielle Patrick spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian about their jour­ney dur­ing day one of the re­cent­ly-con­clud­ed en­er­gy con­fer­ence which was themed “Ac­cel­er­at­ing Ac­tion” and host­ed by the T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber.

The women are among nine of the Pro­man Am­bas­sadors who con­tin­ue to be recog­nised for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion, lead­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al methanol and am­mo­nia projects.

Ali has been with the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies in Trinidad since 2012, when she start­ed as a plant main­te­nance en­gi­neer. For the past two years, Ali has worked at the com­pa­ny’s Am­mo­nia Urea Melamine (AUM) down­stream com­plex as a Con­di­tion Mon­i­tor­ing and In­spec­tion En­gi­neer for the Elec­tri­cal and In­stru­men­ta­tion (E&I) de­part­ment.

In this role, Ali man­ages the re­li­a­bil­i­ty and pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties across all AUM plants and equip­ment, a role which has dri­ven her de­vel­op­ment as she en­gages with cross-di­vi­sion­al teams to es­tab­lish greater main­te­nance process align­ment and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion through­out the AUM down­stream com­plex.

In 2023, in recog­ni­tion of her ex­per­tise, Ali was se­lect­ed to sup­port the Front-End En­gi­neer­ing De­sign (FEED) phase of the TA’ZIZ Methanol Project in Abu Dhabi.

This project, de­vel­oped joint­ly by Pro­man and the Abu Dhabi Na­tion­al Oil Com­pa­ny (AD­NOC), will be the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates’ (UAE) first world-scale methanol pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty. With an ex­pect­ed an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of up to 1.8 mil­lion tonnes per an­num, the fa­cil­i­ty is de­signed to be one of the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced and low-emis­sion nat­ur­al gas-to-methanol fa­cil­i­ties in the world.

While the FEED team com­pris­es petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try ex­perts from around the world, Ali’s knowl­edge from her ex­ten­sive over­sight of re­li­a­bil­i­ty and pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties in T&T meant that she has played a key role in de­vel­op­ing this phase of a world-scale project.

Ali said be­ing a Pro­man Am­bas­sador is ful­fill­ing as she is part of some­thing that is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly while in­cor­po­rat­ing cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy.

Mean­while, 13 years ago, Ho­sein joined Pro­man Trinidad as a trainee in the com­pa­ny’s grad­u­ate in­tern­ship pro­gramme and holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (BSc) in Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine.

Cur­rent­ly a se­nior main­te­nance en­gi­neer at the Pro­man Trinidad’s AUM down­stream com­plex, Ho­sein is poised to take on a new glob­al chal­lenge in Jan­u­ary 2024.

In this new role, she will sup­port the FEED (Front End En­gi­neer­ing De­sign) study for the Ul­tra Low-Car­bon Am­mo­nia Fa­cil­i­ty at Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA, a project un­der­tak­en by Pro­man and Mit­subishi Cor­po­ra­tion.

As she shared her ex­cite­ment about this ven­ture, Ho­sein said, “This is the first time I will ac­tu­al­ly be part of re­view­ing the de­sign of a plant. We have three am­mo­nia plants in Trinidad...I would look at the is­sues we en­counter here on the am­mo­nia plants and en­sure that we cor­rect them up­front so we could im­prove the de­sign and al­so to doc­u­ment the process­es,be­cause it is new tech­nol­o­gy.”

The Lake Charles am­mo­nia plant, which is cur­rent­ly un­der de­vel­op­ment, would pro­duce ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.2 mil­lion tonnes per year of clean am­mo­nia us­ing car­bon cap­ture tech­nolo­gies.

The fa­cil­i­ty will utilise the state-of-the-art Hal­dor Top­soe Syn­cor process to pro­duce am­mo­nia from nat­ur­al gas. The process in­te­grates post-com­bus­tion car­bon cap­ture, there­by min­imis­ing green­house gas emis­sions (GHGs) and al­low­ing for the re­cov­ery of the car­bon diox­ide for oth­er in­dus­tries.

The in­te­gra­tion of am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion with car­bon cap­ture and se­ques­tra­tion (CCS) tech­nolo­gies rep­re­sents a ma­jor ad­vance­ment to­wards more sus­tain­able in­dus­try prac­tices.

As a se­nior mem­ber of Pro­man’s en­gi­neer­ing team, Ho­sein has pre­vi­ous­ly been in­volved in plant con­struc­tion and com­mis­sion­ing at Pro­man Trinidad and Pro­man USA as­sets.

This new project will pro­vide her first op­por­tu­ni­ty to be in­volved in re­view­ing and as­sess­ing a plant’s pro­posed de­sign. Ho­sein’s work on this project will al­so have long-term ben­e­fits, as she will be re­spon­si­ble for doc­u­ment­ing all op­er­a­tional learn­ings and best prac­tices around CCS util­i­sa­tion for fu­ture ref­er­ence.

Not­ing that she gained all of her skills in T&T, Ho­sein boast­ed about the en­gi­neer­ing grad­u­ates pro­duced by the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, adding, “Just re­cent­ly, we took on a batch of grad­u­ates and as we move on we are mak­ing room for all the new grad­u­ates who will take our place.”

As she con­tin­ues to hone her skills, Ho­sein said she has gained quite a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence just work­ing on plants but more­so, she is proud to be a part of the Pro­man fam­i­ly.

“They have giv­en me so many op­por­tu­ni­ties just from com­ing out of uni­ver­si­ty. I nev­er ex­pect­ed to go to the US and rep­re­sent Pro­man and as a fe­male al­so in the in­dus­try and com­mis­sion plants.

“...I am ex­cit­ed to help Pro­man meet the grow­ing de­mand for am­mo­nia as a clean en­er­gy source, while tan­gi­bly demon­strat­ing our com­mit­ment to re­duc­ing our car­bon foot­print and ac­cel­er­at­ing the glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion.”

While at uni­ver­si­ty, Patrick heed­ed the words of wis­dom that a ca­reer should be a source of en­joy­ment and ful­fil one’s pas­sions and there­fore, made the switch from com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing to chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing, a move that she has nev­er re­gret­ted.

Up­on com­ple­tion of her de­gree in 2011, she joined Pro­man’s Grad­u­ate-in-Train­ing pro­gramme in process en­gi­neer­ing, where she gained valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence across the com­pa­ny’s Point Lisas am­mo­nia plants.

In 2017, Patrick ac­cept­ed the role of com­mis­sion­ing process en­gi­neer on the then un­der-con­struc­tion Nat­ga­so­line Methanol Plant in Beau­mont, Texas, USA, an op­por­tu­ni­ty which she de­scribed as one of the high­lights of her ca­reer so far.

Com­mis­sioned in 2018, this fa­cil­i­ty pro­duces more than 1.7 mil­lion tonnes of methanol per an­num and is cur­rent­ly the largest methanol pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty on the USA’s Gulf Coast.

Up­on re­turn­ing to Trinidad, Patrick re­sumed her role as a process en­gi­neer at the CNC am­mo­nia plant.

Not­ing that she was pleased to have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from and share in­dus­try best prac­tices, par­tic­u­lar­ly in op­ti­mis­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion, Patrick said, “Pro­man’s in­vest­ment in sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies was a high­light of my work on the Nat­ga­so­line Methanol plant in 2017. As a Trin­bag­on­ian, I felt a strong sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sent my home coun­try, by ap­proach­ing each task with the high­est lev­el of com­pe­ten­cy and shar­ing my learn­ings up­on my re­turn home.”

Patrick is al­so un­de­terred about be­ing in a field which was seem­ing­ly male dom­i­nat­ed, not­ing that more women have moved in­to the en­er­gy space which is mo­ti­va­tion in it­self.

On her thoughts about be­ing a Pro­man Am­bas­sador, she shared, “This makes me very proud es­pe­cial­ly as Pro­man is a glob­al leader in the en­er­gy in­dus­try.”

About Pro­man’s Am­bas­sadors

Ac­cord­ing to a com­pa­ny spokesman, the am­bas­sadors for this year’s T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence (TTEC) are in­di­vid­u­als from across its HR, op­er­a­tions, sup­ply chain and HSEQ teams who em­body the Pro­man val­ues and rep­re­sent the breadth of skills and ex­per­tise in the busi­ness.

Not­ing that the con­fer­ence brings to­geth­er im­por­tant stake­hold­ers from across the na­tion­al (and re­gion­al) en­er­gy sec­tor and busi­ness land­scape to ad­dress the most press­ing chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties fac­ing the in­dus­try. The spokesman added that, as such, it’s an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty for Pro­man’s teams.

“Each year, a new group of Pro­man TTEC booth am­bas­sadors are nom­i­nat­ed by their re­spec­tive team leads and by Pro­man Trinidad’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions (Aleeya Ali), to give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend the con­fer­ence, en­gage with in­dus­try stake­hold­ers and show­case their roles and the val­ue they bring to the busi­ness.

“This year our fo­cus was the role of our prod­ucts and our peo­ple in the glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion. We shone a spot­light on the Pro­man Trinidad team mem­bers who are lead­ing next-gen­er­a­tion methanol and am­mo­nia projects around the world and bring­ing those skills and best prac­tices back to T&T,” the spokesman added.