Four
state-owned firms to be merged
By Asha Javeed
The Trinidad Guardian
Port Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
03 25 07
SuperCorp
State
energy companies to be merged.
International energy corporation to be formed.
Stakeholders agreement pending.
Global company required for local competition.
Four
state-owned energy companies—Petrotrin, National
Energy Corporation (NEC), National Gas Company (NGC)
and National Petroleum Marketing Company Ltd (NP)—will
soon be merged to form an international energy corporation.
Prime
Minister Patrick Manning said this was where the
future direction of the energy sector is headed,
but hinges on the agreement of stakeholders in the
state enterprises.
The
time has come when T&T has to consider integrating
its oil industry with the establishment of an integrated
oil company that goes international,” he said.
He
said the first meeting of stakeholders should take
place within the next three months.
While
I do not want to prejudice the outcome of the deliberations,
this is one idea whose time may well have come,”
he told energy executives at a luncheon hosted by
British Gas at the Hilton Trinidad yesterday.
He
also said the time had come to put more elaborate
arrangements in place in T&T to ensure an appropriate
tax take.
Minister
in the Ministry of Finance Conrad Enill said, “If
we have to compete globally, we need to have a company
of a particular size.
The
only way you can do that is to bring all resources
together in a particular place and then try and
get global resources,” he said.
When
we looked at all the countries which were doing
this—Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Russia—the
model that they are using is that the state company
has become a dominant company, almost to the size
of a BG or a bp.
An
integrated state company will have that kind of
mass and that level of expertise.
One
global company...What do you require to be globally
competitive?
You
have to get people from all over the world and be
able to operate a company that can set up subsidiaries
in jurisdictions where you have interest where you
want to protect your market.
That’s
the kind of company you are talking about...Owned
by the state.”
Manning
said such a company came with risks—the risk
of irresponsible trade union activity which could
affect the company’s image.
The
bigger the state enterprise gets the more dangerous
a state enterprise can become and that is why in
many of the countries in which that model has been
followed, they report to a head of Government.
T&T
is now reaching the position where we are going
to have to consider that very carefully,”
Enill said.
It
is an idea for proper consideration in the direction
which we ought to go.”
Trinidad
Guardian
Thursday 22nd March, 2007
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