17

Editorial

This issue of the Newsletter contains two articles which deal with the personal and technological adjustments which the authors deem necessary to reshape individuals and organizations, and so ensure their ability to adapt and to manage the changes which will take us into the next century.

A third article provides an update on Joint Ventures in the petroleum industry, which in itself is one strategy for sharing the risk of exploration drilling, as well as uniting the capabilities and strengths of more than one organization, for the benefit of all concerned.

In this light, I wish to consider a couple of other strategies for managing change and for optimizing operational success which are very much in the air at present. Rationalization and the divestment of selected State-owned companies have been discussed, not only in the last few years, but periodically since independence.
Trintoc and Trintopec will shortly operate as one entity, bringing the combined resources of what were formerly Trintoc, Shell Trinidad, Texaco Trinidad and Trinidad Tesoro under one management team, one board of directors and with one corporate mission.
The divestment proposal has been viewed as one means of reducing Government's participation in and liability for economic enterprises, through the sale, leasing or vesting of assets, bringing them under private management, better able to optimize the operations and increase the profitability. The use of share equity in profitable State-owned companies to satisfy Government's outstanding liability to the public sector, has also been viewed as a means of extending the ownership of these assets and providing greater participation in these entities, and, it is to be hoped, a greater spread of the profits of these enterprises.
The decision to divest and the selection of the terms of these agreements, the participants, whether local private sector or foreign-owned, and the companies for divestment, rests entirely with the Government of the day. Consultation may be solicited but it is not mandatory, and the greater public, i.e. workers, management, board members, tax-payers, have the unenviable role of accepting that all decisions made on their behalf have been made with the very best council and in the best interest of the company as well as the economy and the .

Admittedly mistakes have been made in the past and we pay dearly for them. Our leaders have the onerous responsibility of choosing the strategies which will best serve the interest of the people of this country in the short and medium term, while ensuring that the decisions which they commit to today will protect what we as a people have earned and achieved over the years, and make possible a future for our children tomorrow.
Today, rationalization of the two largest, wholly state-owned petroleum producing and refining companies is in progress.


K.A. Gillezeau

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