Big changes at Petrotrin’s suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies.

Busi­ness­man Wil­fred Es­pinet, who su­per­vised Petrotrin’s tran­si­tion—and chaired suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies’ boards—and ail­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um com­pa­ny CEO Mike Wylie are both “out.”

At­tor­ney Michael Quam­i­na and out­go­ing Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man New­man George will now be chair­ing the boards which Es­pinet had head­ed.

And Gov­ern­ment has a po­ten­tial per­ma­nent re­place­ment for Texas-born Wylie, who’s been in the US for the last two months un­der­go­ing can­cer treat­ment. He’d been in T&T with the Petrotrin trans­for­ma­tion project just un­der a year.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced the changes at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Khan said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved cer­tain changes in the board and gov­er­nance of Her­itage as well as the Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Com­pa­ny Ltd—which Es­pinet chaired—the main hold­ing com­pa­ny which suc­ceed­ed Petrotrin.

Es­pinet was the spokesman dur­ing last year’s tur­bu­lent Petrotrin trans­for­ma­tion in­to Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (TPHL) and suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies, Her­itage, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, which Es­pinet all chaired.

Yes­ter­day, Khan re­count­ed Petrotrin’s prob­lems and moves in Sep­tem­ber 2017 to ap­point a new Petrotrin board head­ed by Es­pinet to trans­form Petrotrin in­to a new en­ti­ty.

Khan, how­ev­er, added, “We think the time has come now where the trans­for­ma­tion process has been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed. The TPHL has done an ex­treme­ly good job, re­struc­tured op­er­a­tions and trans­formed (Petrotrin) in­to its new look.”

Khan didn’t name Es­pinet. He sim­ply an­nounced Quam­i­na—who is a TPHL board mem­ber—to chair TPHL here­on. George, who’s on all three com­pa­ny boards, will now chair the Paria and Guaracara com­pa­nies. (See box)

Khan added, “We thank those who served on TPHL and as­sure per­sons who aren’t in this present con­fig­u­ra­tion that we ap­pre­ci­ate their out­stand­ing ser­vice to T&T. They’ve done an ex­treme­ly cred­i­ble job for T& and they’ve placed the new en­ti­ty on the path to suc­cess.”

On whether there had been is­sues with Es­pinet, Im­bert said, “Few peo­ple in T&T could have done the job that he did in re­struc­tur­ing the com­pa­ny and se­cur­ing the fi­nanc­ing of the (US)$850 mil­lion bond. But the re­struc­tur­ing is more or less com­plete and we’re now mov­ing to op­er­a­tions. So the board has done the job we asked them to do and it’s time to move in­to a dif­fer­ent phase of the com­pa­ny’s life.

“Mr Es­pinet and his team did a fan­tas­tic job. There was a very tight time sched­ule, one of the great­est achieve­ments was the bond re­fi­nanc­ing...so he did a fan­tas­tic job in re­struc­tur­ing, bril­liant, but we’re now mov­ing in­to op­er­a­tions. There are all sorts of is­sues: we have to get oil pro­duc­tion up...”

One of Es­pinet’s last ac­tions was a memo to Her­itage work­ers this week, stand­ing by Wylie, whose con­tract, Es­pinet said, wouldn’t be ter­mi­nat­ed dur­ing his ab­sence. Es­pinet had said Wylie re­mained Her­itage CEO and need­ed to be part of the team be­cause of his abil­i­ty to dri­ve Her­itage for­ward. Es­pinet said fir­ing Wylie would be more time con­sum­ing and cost­ly than al­low­ing him six months to re­cu­per­ate. This, af­ter it was re­vealed that Wylie was ill, had tak­en leave and un­der­gone surgery in the US.

On Tues­day, Her­itage is­sued a state­ment say­ing a five-mem­ber team was be­ing in­sti­tut­ed to as­sist Wylie—still re­ceiv­ing med­ical treat­ment af­ter surgery—and he would di­rect op­er­a­tions from Texas.

But Khan said Her­itage was im­por­tant to Gov­ern­ment and be­cause of the chal­lenge of Wylie’s ill­ness, the new board was man­dat­ed to find “in the in­ter­im, a re­place­ment CEO to con­tin­ue work over the next six months, in which time we’ll have a bet­ter feel as to what Wylie’s health con­di­tion is be­fore we take any fur­ther de­ci­sions.”

In­ter­im CEO made no sense - Im­bert

How­ev­er, Im­bert im­me­di­ate­ly told re­porters there would be no “in­ter­im” CEO and a per­ma­nent re­place­ment is ahead.

He said the view when Gov­ern­ment learned of Wylie’s ab­sence was that a per­ma­nent re­place­ment must be found im­me­di­ate­ly.

“...Some­one with the same lev­el of ex­pe­ri­ence and qual­i­fi­ca­tions, so it’s not go­ing to be an in­ter­im so­lu­tion. It’ll be to find a per­ma­nent re­place­ment for Mr Wylie. We’ve in­struct­ed the com­pa­ny that they have to fill that po­si­tion im­me­di­ate­ly with a suit­able re­place­ment,” Im­bert said.

“We think Her­itage is too im­por­tant to the econ­o­my and TT’s sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ing to al­low a sit­u­a­tion to con­tin­ue and re­main in lim­bo, where this gen­tle­man was brought in at great ex­pense with high hopes, (but) who is un­for­tu­nate­ly ill through no fault of his own .”

Im­bert not­ed Her­itage’s press re­lease about its plan to op­er­ate in Wylie’s ab­sence. But he said in­for­ma­tion Gov­ern­ment re­ceived a few weeks ago was that Wylie was al­ready ab­sent for a month or two and his doc­tors said he couldn’t re­turn to T&T phys­i­cal­ly to take on the rigours of the job for a fur­ther six months.

He said Her­itage’s pro­posed in­ter­im lead­er­ship team “... Wasn’t con­sis­tent with what we felt should be done. We felt a com­pa­ny as im­por­tant as this should have a re­place­ment CEO - a sub­ject mat­ter ex­pert - im­me­di­ate­ly. The com­pa­ny will not be run by any team of peo­ple over the next six months.

“We’re seek­ing and I think we’ve iden­ti­fied a po­ten­tial re­place­ment—I wouldn’t want to name yet—to run Her­itage; some­body with the kind of ex­per­tise, qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence in the en­er­gy sec­tor that’s re­quired to run a com­pa­ny of this sort.”

Im­bert said if Gov­ern­ment hadn’t de­cid­ed to have such a suit­able re­place­ment im­me­di­ate­ly, it would have had ad­verse im­pli­ca­tions for fi­nanc­ing. He said for some­one of Wylie’s lead­er­ship lev­el to be ab­sent from T&T for eight months “... doesn’t make any sense.”

On whether Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion “trumped” Her­itage’s plan, Im­bert stressed, “We’ve tak­en a de­ci­sion that we can’t con­tin­ue with a team of peo­ple with­out sub­ject mat­ter ex­per­tise run­ning such an im­por­tant com­pa­ny.”

Asked if Wylie will be paid his full re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age, Im­bert said, “What he’ll be paid, what he’s en­ti­tled to are mat­ters we ex­pect Mr Quam­i­na, as a very ex­pe­ri­enced at­tor­ney, will han­dle. It’ll be ad­dressed the best way with good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice. Mr Quam­i­na has a lot of IR and In­dus­tri­al Court ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Our con­cern is get­ting oil pro­duc­tion up as it’s af­fect­ing T&T’s sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ing. It’d be ir­re­spon­si­ble as Gov­ern­ment to have a com­pa­ny head be­ing out of T&T run­ning a com­pa­ny by re­mote con­trol for six months.”

Not­ing dai­ly rev­enue of US$300,000, Im­bert said the cost of any set­tle­ment would be in­signif­i­cant to what T&T could lose in oil pro­duc­tion with an ab­sent CEO.

“The re­turns we’re putting in­to a per­ma­nent re­place­ment far out­weigh any set­tle­ment they may have with Wylie,” he said.

In No­vem­ber 2018, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said in Par­lia­ment that Wylie’s re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age was US$450,000 an­nu­al­ly - about TT$240,000 month­ly- plus hous­ing, trans­porta­tion and health.

The T&T Guardian learned Wylie has a three-year con­tract. Khan said he hoped the new board will build on Wylie’s plans. He said though Her­itage de­clared a sub­stan­tial prof­it, there are still is­sues to deal with, biggest be­ing to get pro­duc­tion up as soon as pos­si­ble.

Es­pinet didn’t an­swer calls yes­ter­day nor did Quam­i­na. Sources said a Her­itage board mem­ber with en­er­gy sec­tor ex­pe­ri­ence is tipped as CEO.

UNC says good rid­dance

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy leader David Lee yes­ter­day wel­comed Es­pinet’s de­par­ture from the en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

“Mr Es­pinet’s de­par­ture is long over­due. He de­stroyed Petrotrin and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. We have in­for­ma­tion Es­pinet wasn’t told he was be­ing fired, which is what oc­curred it seems,” Lee said.

How­ev­er, he added, “We have con­cerns about Michael Quam­i­na as his re­place­ment, since he’s known to be an as­so­ciate of the Prime Min­is­ter. Al­so, what is Quam­i­na’s en­er­gy ex­pe­ri­ence to be able to head a com­pa­ny of this kind? He’s an at­tor­ney. We have no con­fi­dence in the en­er­gy sec­tor now, giv­en these play­ers on the three boards.”

Lee al­so ques­tioned out­go­ing HDC chair­man New­man’s George move to the en­er­gy-based com­pa­nies.

“We al­so have HDC chair­man George head­ing Paria and Guaracara which have Petrotrin’s land as­sets and he’s the House Speak­er’s hus­band. We al­so not­ed the dif­fer­ence in ex­pla­na­tions from Min­is­ter Khan and Im­bert on Mike Wylie’s re­place­ment.

“But the big­ger ques­tion is what will it cost tax­pay­ers for Wylie’s ex­it pack­age for his very short tenure and would we be re­spon­si­ble for his med­ical bills in the US?”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Richard Lee said the lead­er­ship was in a meet­ing on the Unilever is­sue. But for­mer union branch of­fi­cial and Trin­mar em­ploy­ee Shankar Teelucks­ingh said, “We have no re­morse in say­ing Es­pinet should have been sent pack­ing long ago—he’ took out’ 50,000 work­ers in T&T.

“We hope he knows how it feels to be fired. He’s now feel­ing the back­lash of his work. Gov­ern­ment needs to tell us how much was paid to Wylie for his non-per­for­mance and where is the pro­duc­tion which was ex­pect­ed.”

New boards

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said HDC chair­man New­man George is com­plet­ing the sec­ond of two terms at HDC and by law isn’t al­lowed more. He said the com­ple­tion of his HDC stint will al­low for tran­si­tion in­to the Paria and Guaracara chair­man­ships, which are crit­i­cal en­ter­pris­es.

TPHL BOARD - Michael Quam­i­na (chair­man), Reynold Ad­jod­has­ingh (deputy), New­man George, An­tho­ny Chan Tack, Joel Hard­ing, Sel­wyn Lash­ley, Eu­stace Nan­cis.

HER­ITAGE - Michael Quam­i­na (chair­man), New­man George (deputy) Reynold Ad­jod­has­ingh, Sel­wyn Lash­ley, Joel Hard­ing, Ryan To­by, George Leonard Lewis, Pe­ter Clarke, Reeza Saleem.

PARIA - New­man George (chair­man), Eu­stance Nan­cis, Chris­tine Sa­hadeo, Pe­ter Clarke, Reeza Saleem.

GUARACARA - New­man George (chair­man), An­tho­ny Chan Tack, Pe­ter Clarke, Chris­tine Sa­hadeo.