Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/ Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Two for­mer min­is­ters of en­er­gy be­lieve that while it’s not detri­men­tal to have a non-ex­pert lead­ing the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Ger­ald Ramdeen must quick­ly learn the in­dus­try and un­der­stand the weight of the task ahead, as NGC is the coun­try’s pri­ma­ry en­er­gy earn­er.

The at­tor­ney re­ceived his of­fi­cial let­ter of ap­point­ment from Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, on Mon­day.

This ap­point­ment fol­lows a pe­ri­od of rapid changes in the NGC’s lead­er­ship, as Ramdeen re­placed re­new­able en­er­gy ex­pert Dr Randy Ra­mad­har Singh.

How­ev­er, for­mer min­is­ter and NGC chair Con­rad Enill said Ramdeen has the req­ui­site com­pe­tence to guide him and the com­pa­ny.

“The NGC group has a num­ber of very ex­pe­ri­enced em­ploy­ees at all lev­els. But re­mem­ber that the board is com­prised of a group of oth­er tech­nocrats as well, and they are al­so guid­ed by both the Min­istry of En­er­gy, and al­so there’s a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ad­vi­sors who are tech­ni­cal ex­perts. So, again, the to­tal­i­ty of every­thing will cause the de­ci­sion-mak­ing to be in a par­tic­u­lar way.”

Enill, who served as en­er­gy min­is­ter un­der the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion from 2007 to 2010, said Ramdeen’s ap­point­ment sig­nals the di­rec­tion the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to take the NGC.

“If they have a le­gal chair­man, the fo­cus will be le­gal. If they have an en­er­gy chair­man, then the fo­cus will be en­er­gy.”

In jus­ti­fy­ing his ap­point­ment, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said Ramdeen was cho­sen due to his strong le­gal back­ground, which he be­lieves is valu­able, as he added that the NGC is cur­rent­ly fac­ing sev­er­al chal­lenges, in­clud­ing le­gal is­sues, gas sup­ply ne­go­ti­a­tions and mat­ters of en­er­gy pol­i­cy and diplo­ma­cy.

How­ev­er, Enill said the for­mer tem­po­rary UNC sen­a­tor must learn about the busi­ness quick­ly and recog­nise the mag­ni­tude of the as­sign­ment giv­en to him at NGC.

“Who­ev­er the chair­man is, he has to rep­re­sent the biggest earn­ing as­set of the Gov­ern­ment glob­al­ly. And re­al­ly and tru­ly, you are go­ing to be deal­ing with a num­ber of very sig­nif­i­cant play­ers, sig­nif­i­cant coun­tries, sig­nif­i­cant prime min­is­ters, and the Gov­ern­ment has to de­cide how they wish to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go in those cir­cum­stances.”

How­ev­er, an­oth­er for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter be­lieves that while Ramdeen doesn’t need to be an en­er­gy ex­pert, it would have been prefer­able.

Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who held the post be­tween May 2010 to June 2011 dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, said, “I would have pre­ferred some­one with an NGC back­ground, al­though we did not quite achieve that un­der my time be­cause I was not in charge of board ap­point­ments. You know, there was a board ap­point­ments com­mit­tee. But in all cas­es, I would pre­fer that per­son had some ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try it­self.”

Seep­er­sad-Bachan ex­plained, “From time to time, the chair­man will have to crit­i­cal­ly re­view the de­ci­sions of man­age­ment, and hence the rea­son why it is al­ways prefer­able or ide­al for that per­son to at least not nec­es­sar­i­ly be a tech­ni­cal ex­pert but have had some ex­pe­ri­ence in that in­dus­try.”

How­ev­er, she said it was al­so im­por­tant that the board has the right bal­ance of ex­per­tise.

“In terms of the com­pe­ten­cies, whether it is in fi­nance, law, hu­man re­source man­age­ment, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, and then you would have a num­ber of sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts on the board it­self. In that way, you re­lieve the chair­man of hav­ing that re­quire­ment.”

The deputy chair­man of NGC is Ram­nar­ine Be­dassie. The oth­er di­rec­tors are Naz­im Sar­jad, Dr Ram­per­sad Moti­lal, Dr Ahamad Khan, Steve See­ta­hal, Ro­hi­ni Ra­mai Pe­ters, Prof David Alexan­der, and Joseph Toney.

Sar­jad has pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence with­in NGC, hav­ing served as a man­ag­er in Con­struc­tion Ser­vices.

See­ta­hal, who is a se­nior in­struc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), has done re­search in en­er­gy eco­nom­ics.

Ra­mai Pe­ters served as Com­mer­cial Lead for Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment and Ex­plo­ration ac­tiv­i­ties in Trinidad and Nige­ria, work­ing on var­i­ous Up­stream Li­cens­ing Bid Rounds, Joint Ven­ture Farm-in deals, and oth­er com­mer­cial agree­ments.

And Prof Alexan­der is an As­so­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Pe­tro­le­um En­gi­neer­ing at the UTT.