Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter 

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment in­tends to restart the Lo­cal Con­tent Com­mit­tee with­in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, which has been with­out a chair for ap­prox­i­mate­ly three years.

The com­mit­tee’s man­date is to max­imise the par­tic­i­pa­tion of lo­cal peo­ple, busi­ness­es, tech­nol­o­gy and cap­i­tal across the en­er­gy val­ue chain, in­clud­ing through the de­vel­op­ment and in­creased use of lo­cal­ly owned com­pa­nies and skills.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ernesto Ke­sar made the an­nounce­ment last Wednes­day at La Reve, C3’s con­fer­ence cen­tre, where TNR Com­pa­ny Ltd cel­e­brat­ed 34 years in the con­struc­tion and en­er­gy in­dus­tries and marked its achieve­ment of ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, to­geth­er with sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG busi­ness as­sur­ance cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“As I said last week, there is a lo­cal con­tent mech­a­nism in the Min­istry of En­er­gy that has been with us for a long time. We have been with­out a chair for about three years, and it is our man­date to restart that lo­cal con­tent com­mit­tee as we pre­pare for a new wave of en­er­gy suc­cess in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Ke­sar said the con­tri­bu­tion of lo­cal com­pa­nies such as TNR re­mains crit­i­cal to the fu­ture of the en­er­gy sec­tor, which con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor source of rev­enue for the coun­try.

Ke­sar al­so high­light­ed the con­tin­ued in­ter­est of ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies in Trinidad and To­ba­go, point­ing specif­i­cal­ly to Shell’s in­vest­ments in projects in­clud­ing Man­a­tee and Man­a­tee Plus.

“I want to recog­nise Shell and all of our lega­cy in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners for the work and their con­tin­ued con­fi­dence in our coun­try by their in­vest­ment in Man­a­tee, Man­a­tee Plus, and some of the oth­er projects,” he said.

Ke­sar added that the Gov­ern­ment is en­cour­aged by the lev­el of in­ter­est be­ing shown by ma­jor en­er­gy com­pa­nies in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

TNR strength­ens its role in the en­er­gy sec­tor

Against that back­drop, TNR is po­si­tion­ing it­self to play a greater role in the sec­tor, hav­ing ex­pand­ed its ca­pa­bil­i­ties in both on­shore and off­shore ser­vices.

Project Man­ag­er for Civ­il Projects, Chris Ram­sub­hag, said the com­pa­ny’s trans­for­ma­tion be­gan in earnest fol­low­ing the 2008 glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis, when it made a strate­gic de­ci­sion to pre­pare for the cycli­cal na­ture of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

“Recog­nis­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by the en­er­gy sec­tor, we in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in both hu­man cap­i­tal and spe­cialised equip­ment while im­ple­ment­ing key struc­tur­al and man­age­ment changes across the com­pa­ny,” Ram­sub­hag said.

He said those in­vest­ments al­lowed TNR to ex­pand its ca­pa­bil­i­ties and pur­sue ma­jor en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture projects.

With the Shell Man­a­tee on­shore pipeline project near­ing com­ple­tion, Ram­sub­hag said the com­pa­ny has now es­tab­lished it­self as a full-ser­vice provider of on­shore and off­shore so­lu­tions.

He said TNR is lever­ag­ing its “di­verse re­sources, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise and op­er­a­tional ex­pe­ri­ence to de­liv­er com­pre­hen­sive ser­vices across the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

The com­pa­ny’s lat­est mile­stone is the achieve­ment of ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, which cov­er qual­i­ty man­age­ment, en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment and oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty.

TNR’s HSE Man­ag­er, Kavi Maraj, de­scribed the achieve­ment as a proud mo­ment for the com­pa­ny.

He said the cer­ti­fi­ca­tions bring the com­pa­ny’s var­i­ous man­age­ment sys­tems to­geth­er while demon­strat­ing its com­mit­ment to qual­i­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and work­place safe­ty.

“These cer­ti­fi­ca­tions demon­strate our com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing qual­i­ty ser­vices, pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, en­sur­ing the health and safe­ty of our peo­ple and con­duct­ing busi­ness re­spon­si­bly and sus­tain­ably,” Maraj said.

He said the achieve­ment al­so re­in­forces TNR’s com­mit­ment to its clients and stake­hold­ers.

“We will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate [to] in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised stan­dards while dri­ving con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ments,” he said.

But the com­pa­ny’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty am­bi­tions ex­tend be­yond cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Re­new­able En­er­gy Con­sul­tant Dr Richard Ram­rat­tan said TNR has dis­tin­guished it­self by in­vest­ing in prac­ti­cal re­new­able-en­er­gy projects rather than sim­ply dis­cussing ESG prin­ci­ples.

“TNR Com­pa­ny Ltd stood out from the rest, not by choos­ing to talk about projects and dis­cus­sion, but [by] in­vest[ing] in tan­gi­ble ac­tions,” Ram­rat­tan said.

He high­light­ed TNR’s in­volve­ment in de­liv­er­ing Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um’s 100-kilo­watt so­lar-pow­ered ser­vice sta­tion, which com­bines re­new­able en­er­gy gen­er­a­tion with elec­tric ve­hi­cle charg­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

Ram­rat­tan said the project rep­re­sents an im­por­tant ex­am­ple of how tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture can evolve to sup­port clean­er trans­porta­tion and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

The com­pa­ny al­so in­stalled mul­ti­ple six-kilo­watt so­lar pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems across op­er­a­tional fa­cil­i­ties in 2025, in­clud­ing a wa­ter treat­ment plant and leas­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

Ram­rat­tan said those sys­tems are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18,000 kilo­watt-hours of clean elec­tric­i­ty an­nu­al­ly and pre­vent an es­ti­mat­ed 11 tonnes of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions each year.

While de­scrib­ing the projects as rel­a­tive­ly mod­est in ca­pac­i­ty, he said their sig­nif­i­cance goes be­yond the amount of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed.

“It rep­re­sents some­thing far more sig­nif­i­cant, a cor­po­rate cul­ture that un­der­stands that sus­tain­abil­i­ty is achieved through con­sis­ten­cy, mea­sured de­ci­sions, and not overnight grand ges­tures,” Ram­rat­tan said.

He said TNR’s ap­proach demon­strates that ESG should not be treat­ed as a box-tick­ing ex­er­cise.

“ESG is not about tick­ing box­es or pub­lish­ing re­ports. It’s about mak­ing in­vest­ments to re­duce emis­sions, im­prove en­er­gy re­silience, en­cour­ag­ing in­no­va­tion, and lead­ing pos­i­tive lega­cy for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” he said.

Ram­rat­tan al­so chal­lenged oth­er pri­vate-sec­tor com­pa­nies to em­brace re­new­able en­er­gy and ESG as op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth.

“If more or­gan­i­sa­tions took this ap­proach, in­vest­ing in re­new­able en­er­gy, sup­port­ing elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, and em­bed­ding ESG in­to busi­ness­es rather than treat­ing it as an oblig­a­tion, then Trinidad and To­ba­go will be po­si­tioned to build a clean­er, more re­silient, and more com­pet­i­tive econ­o­my,” he said.

For TNR, the 34-year mile­stone and new cer­ti­fi­ca­tions come as the com­pa­ny seeks to build on its tra­di­tion­al con­struc­tion and en­er­gy-sec­tor op­er­a­tions while em­brac­ing re­new­able en­er­gy, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and stronger ESG prac­tices.

Ram­rat­tan said the com­pa­ny’s ap­proach could serve as an ex­am­ple for the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.